Traffic Exchange Scoop

Recently StartXchange has updated their surfbar with a completely brand new look! While I’ll miss the old one, I absolutely love the new additions to the surfbar.

First, the overall look has been changed to match the design of the website, which was changed fairly recently as well.

However what truly stands out is that the StartXchange surfbar now accomplishes two new things:

1. It brands the advertiser
2. It promotes the "just one more" attitude

How does it do all that you ask?

Now when you surf each page, the surfbar will also display a picture of the person advertising their webpage (or blank image if the user hasn’t added a photo). So if your website is rotating constantly, your picture will also be seen regularly by surfers, giving members stronger branding power. One of the concepts that many traffic exchange owners recommend is branding your name and image, and I can say from personal experience that it is the reason people know who I am today.

The new StartXchange surfbar also makes it hard to stop surfing for those of us who are a little competitive! StartXchange has surfing levels and rankings based on activity. Now every time you surf, you also see the next member who is ranked higher than you are, and how many pages you need to surf to pass them!

I realize this can be a bit hard to understand, so you’ll just have to log in and surf StartXchange to see what I’m talking about.

Yes, StartXchange is giving away 20,000 Credits! No referring or surfing to win this time. Just be subscribed to owner Tim Linden’s blog for a week! Yes, that’s it!

Just join by May 25th and stay subscribed until June 1st and you will be entered for your chance to win. If you aren’t familiar with his blog, it is definitely worth subscribing either way. Some great content has been released recently, including traffic exchange owner interviews, great tutorials, and the “How to Spot a Bad Traffic Exchange” series.

You can find the post about the big credit prize at how to subscribe by clicking here. 

StartXchange has a very popular team system that gives out a large prizes to its winners each month. However the prizes given out last month were incorrect, and the wrong teams were awarded prizes. Tim Linden has chosen to allow everyone who incorrectly received a prize to keep it (totaling 80,000 credits!) as well as reward the actual winners.

I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of reading blogs because there are just so many of them out there. But Tim Linden’s blog is receiving a lot of praise lately for the content of his blog, and even I find myself trying to visit if I have time. His latest posts include how to spot a bad traffic exchange, which is something I think every Traffic exchange user should know how to do. It helps reward the owners who deliver and helps you join quality programs.

StartXchange is giving a free 10% surfing bonus for coming in to surf today. Remember that this is on top of the regular surfing bonuses, so be sure to log in and take advantage. The increased activity should give surfers a nice percentage increase on your surfing efforts.

On a quick side note, the owner of  StartXchange, Tim Linden, has been publishing weekly interviews on his blog from many different traffic exchange owners. I have to highlight this week’s interview though, because love him or hate him, he is one of the biggest names in the traffic exchange industry. Jon Olson’s interview is online, be sure to read it by clicking here.

StartXchange is bringing in a new daily bonus system! For every 100 pages you surf, you will win a random prize. In addition, you can receive up to 10 entries a day (1 entry per 100 pages) for a chance to win a prize. The prizes for each day are 1,000 credits, 750 credits, and 500 credits.

StartXchange has also recently introduced a bidding system where members can bid credits for the Start page of a surfing session and also to have their banner displayed on the header of the member forum!

Something crazy happened today. ILoveHits, StartXchange, and Traffic-Splash are giving you a chance to win 1,000 credits at each exchange! To qualify, all you have to do is surf 100 pages at each. 15 winners will be chosen, 5 at each exchange.

Oh, that sounds pretty normal to you? How about this: For the occasion, Traffic-Splash is actually increasing their surf timer to 10 seconds! If you’ve ever felt like a 6 second timer is too short to advertise your site, now is your chance to enjoy a 10 second timer at one of the highest rated traffic exchanges in the industry today.

I’ve just discovered that StartXchange has debuted with a brand new site design! It keeps the old color scheme but gives it a fresh new look for this old traffic exchange. Head over to StartXchange and see what’s new.

StartXchange is now introducing Free Upgrade Fridays! From now on, every Friday all free members get to surf as if they were Gold members! This is a unique way to promote surfing at StartXchange and encourage more upgrades as members see how much easier life is as an upgraded member. It will be interesting to see how this affects user activity. The first Free Upgrade Friday will be this week.

The corny lines continue, and this time it is from StartXchange hosting Super Saturday! It’s not free referrals this time, but instead you will earn an extra 3 activity points for each page viewed today. This will be a regular event every Saturday, which should greatly increase activity and help you earn extra credits (The more people surfing at StartXchange, the higher your surf ratio).

Tim Linden over at StartXchange has added another great feature. You can now rate the pages that you see while surfing. As an incentive to do so, you will get activity points added towards your rankings.

What truly makes this feature great is that you can see how well your peers rate the websites that you are promoting. If the people you are advertising to don’t like your ad, it is vital that you find out so you can improve your pages. If you enjoy surfing at StartXchange, please do others a favor and rate their pages. You will benefit with activity points (which helps your surf ratio) and help someone else at the same time.