Traffic Exchange Scoop

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.

Hit2Hit has changed its surf timer to 6 seconds for Monday and Tuesday, so get surfing!

Also, just announced is that if members will have a chance to win $10 today and tomorrow. To qualify, simply surf 50 pages for your chance to win on that respective day. One lucky winner will be chosen each day.

Franscisca Kruissink, owner of Hit2Hit, also happened to do fill out an interview at Tim Linden’s Blog. Take a look if you’d like to know more about her and what it takes to run a traffic exchange.

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.

StartXchange has changed its surfbar buttons for easier surfing. The owner, Tim Linden, has stated that the feedback he has received from the change is very positive. If you did not like the icons before, you owe it to yourself to take another look.

Please Note: Any “Solo Says” posts are mainly my opinions sprinkled in with some facts. Feel free to intelligently agree or disagree. =)

Have you noticed that recently some traffic exchanges have been reducing their surf timers as a temporary bonus for surfers? The idea sounds great, after all that means you can get more page views per hour and ultimately earn more credits. But what the people who surfed before for 15 seconds, and then learns that someone else could be watching their page for only 10 seconds. How does that make you feel?

Recently Tim Linden brought up this issue in his blog. At his suggestion, I will address my thoughts on it. The obvious problem is that this does not seem like a fair trade off, I view someone’s page for a certain period of time to earn credits, but someone else earns the same for a smaller time investment.

And what about the people who purchase credits, expecting their websites to be shown for 15 seconds, but instead it is shown for 10 seconds? Do you have a right to be upset? I think it is fair, but in the end we should look at the big picture.

The bottom line is that we desire certain results. I don’t see a problem with timers changing. I regularly surf at exchanges with surf timers ranging from 6 – 30 seconds, and the timing of the surfbars have shown no affect on the results of my advertising campaigns.

It’s not about the surf timer, the bonuses, or the theme. It is about the members. The question to ask is “who?” Who is surfing at these exchanges? When I look at Traffic-Splash, which has a 5-6 second timer, my results are typically excellent because the members are active. While comparatively, some exchanges with 15+ second timers give me very poor results.

My thoughts are that as long as the members are active and reading my pages, the length of the surfbar is irrelevant (As long as it is shown long enough for someone to read and understand it).

What does Solo say? I say I don’t care; as long my message gets in front of interested people. I also say that I completely understand if you are against this practice as well. You invest your time and money for a service to be provided. If it is not delivered the way it was promised, you have the right be upset. But for me, as long as the results continue to come, I will be there.

If you have ever surfed at StartXchange, you will know that it is one of the cleanest traffic exchanges on the Internet. To this day the worst I have ever run into was a frame breaker, and even that is incredibly rare to see at StartXchange. Owner and programmer of StartXchange, Tim Linden, is asking his members’ opinions on whether to open up the site scanner as a service to other traffic exchanges.

The downside is that the feature would no longer be exclusive to StartXchange, and being known as one of the cleanest exchanges on the internet is a powerful attraction.

On the plus side, having the site scanner open to other owners for a fee will create cleaner traffic exchanges for everyone. Although this question went out to members in his forum, Linden is very active here at TEscoop, so leave a comment if you want to your voice heard on this issue if you aren’t already a member of StartXchange.

StartXchange owner Tim Linden has recently started a top list for traffic exchanges titled, “Top Traffic Exchanges“. This list currently ranks traffic exchanges based on the number of log-ins daily and weekly.

This is an interesting way to rank traffic exchanges, which could indicate how active traffic exchange’s members are. Because the Top Traffic Exchanges list is still new, it seems to be undergoing many changes. When it was initially opened, the rankings were based on page views to the home pages.

As with all lists, it should be approached with caution. Only the traffic exchanges that choose to participate will be ranked in this program. Participating exchanges will have a small button that displays its rank on the homepage. However this is yet another method of evaluation you can use to determine the right traffic exchange for you!

View the list here.

Tim Linden recommended that I make a page listing all of my “Did You Know” items, so I did! You can find it on the menu to your right.

No catchy title this time! Blue-Surf is a brand new traffic exchange that is getting attention lately due to Jon Olsen, a highly recognized expert for traffic exchanges. He has mentioned that this is an exchange to watch because it has a lot of great potential.

This is primarily due to the custom script written by the owner of Blue-Surf. This gives it huge potential for the future, much like StartXchange’s custom script written by Tim Linden.

Whether or not the owner is willing and capable of bringing Blue-Surf up to that level, remains to be seen. But the future does look bright in the short term with its early publicity. The owner has released the first weekly update, added some splash pages, changed the design, and changed a few things around already. 234 members have joined this past week, which is great growth for a new traffic exchange.

You can visit Blue-Surf here.