Quiet month

I know I have been pretty slack when it comes to keeping this updated, but the christmas period has been rather hectic and I'm sure most of you will understand.

One of the more recent ways I am putting effort in to making some money, and that is consuming a considerable amount of time of late, is to sell web hosting services. Nothing special, I'm not the one in the hot seat as it were. Its just a normal affiliate program but with my own branding.

On top of that, the only other programs I'm actively taking part in are the NoMoreClicking and the auto-surf programs. I have not been keeping up with TS25 because there just hasn't been the time of late.

One word of note, and I'll cover this more when I get the chance. Do not use any of the auto/manual surfing programs if you are a Google AdSense customer. They didn't tell me, but that is the only thing that changed in recent months that I can think of for them to boot me out of the program. Pissed me off big time too.

Looking for an alternative, but its not exactly easy. Am also going to start spending a bit of effort on ClickBank sales.

More about all that after the new year festivities are concluded.

Web Hosting Services now available

I just put together a package that allows me to sell online web hosting and domain registration. I am partnering with a company who will wholesale me the service for me to onsell. Not a bad setup, I do say.

If you're looking for webhosting, or just domain registration, how does $7.50/mnth for 15gig of storage and 300gig of transfers sound? How about $9.95/yr for domain registration? Hell, if you buy a hosting package, I'll even through in 1 domain registration for free. You can even use PayPal to make your payments. This is on top of the usual Visa/Mastercard options.

If you're interested, check out SKC Hosting for more information.

Just not enough hours to waste

Part of the biggest issue I have with manual exchanges is that they require so much time to be of use. You could spend an hour or two a day, sure, but you'd get pretty much nothing back as a result.

I haven't had a chance to put any time in to Traffic Syndicate 25 since last week. I've been busy and things are a little hectic in general at the moment. As a result, I didn't make it in to a syndicate and already this week I'm so far behind the rest as to make it totally not worth the effort already. I would have to invest in several days of doing nothing but Traffic Syndicate browsing. And there just aren't that many sites on there that I'm interested in seeing over and over and over.

I am going back to concentrating on my real business for a bit. I want to get the hosting stuff online and running as soon as I can. Its bothering me a bit a the moment that I haven't been able to do so yet.

Still, the result is that manual surfing such as Traffic Syndicate 25 is going on the back burner until I have time to be able to put a real effort in to it. Something I most definitely do not have at the moment. It strikes me that for the return, its one of the biggest wastes of time. You get no enjoyment and the cash rate sucks. Even the competition wears off after a week.

ARGH! Ranking lost! Outside the top 25 again!

So after not browsing on Traffic Syndicate 25 for one day, I've lost all my ranking and dropped down to 31st on the list. I need to be above 25 to get in to a syndicate. This is not good.

With less than 30 hours before the syndicates are created, I have to build up over 3000 points just to get back to my position of 16th. 10000 to get in to the top 10. :-|

My fault for playing games on a Friday instead of spending the time doing some surfing ;-)

The competition is on!

I'm finding myself absolutely surprised at how brutal the competition in Traffic Syndicate 25 is. And I'm definitely not helping ease the pressure. ;-)

Free members are put in to whats called the "Syndicate Pool". Of that pool, every week, the top 25 are taken and placed in to a Syndicate. At the moment, theres about 49000 people in the pool. Most of whom just haven't even attempted to get any rank at all. So they don't count. But the top 200 or so... Thats where the competition is.

I'm currently ranked 18th in this pool. When I went to go to bed last night, there were people attacking my position. So I didn't go to sleep, I crawled in to bed with the laptop and kept on surfing in an attempt to stop them stealing my rank and dropping me out fo the top 25.

By the time I woke up, after 5 hours of sleep, I'd been dumped to 21st again and I am now struggling to catch up with those that laid seige while I was asleep. So much time and effort. Its insane. But its strangely addictive. Its the competition that gets you doing it more. The actual manual surfing is tedious, but the competition definitely makes up for it ;-)

Actually, this program I don't care about making money or traffic from (there is a 5:1 credit ratio on traffic, which is quite expensive, most common is 2:1) as I'm just enjoying the fight for rank ;-)

For those wondering the ratio... That means 5 credits will get me one hit on my site. Most traffic exchanges offer 2 credits to 1 hit. Some slightly more expensive, a couple are cheaper. However, in many cases, if you pay for a subscription, you'll often get a 1:1 ratio on traffic.

Another auto surf, called Auto-Surf

Well, I signed up with another auto surf program. This one goes by the name of "auto-surf" :-)

In essense its very much like NoMoreClicking except that it appears to have a much broader payout scheme and the forums appear to be a little more active than the other. The company that runs it has at least one other auto surf program that I've seen.

Again, I'm going to use this one to start generating more coin. From what I can tell, a $10 invest me will net me 1% a day return. I'm not entirely sure how that works. They're saying you could earn 365% in 365 days, but by my calculations, thats only $36.50 a year. :-| Problem is, most of the auto surfer sites out there are offering something similar. The highest I've seen is 12% a day, but you have to invest every 12 days. Ultimately that means that in any 12 day period you're only going to make a 44% profit. The rest has goes to paying for the next 12 days.

I'm still reading on how the pay structures work. When I figure it all out, I'll let you know. ;-) Or if someone else knows how it all works, (or where I can read the info) I'd appreciate a pointer.

Either way, right now I'm at least getting something back for viewing a load of advertising websites. ;-) That was the original aim.

Rapid rise in ranking

Either its very easy to do, or I'm just too damn good. But in less than 3 hours I've crawled myself through the ranks at ts25.com and managed to get myself to #39 of some 44000 or so in the syndicate pool. ;-) Now... That suggests to me that most of those people just really can't be bothered with it all.

Personally I just like the idea of climbing up the rankings. Tis my whole motivation. To get to the top syndicate by spending as little as possible. Nothing if I can ;-)

I think its just a case of I'm damn good and damn persistent. ;-)

The newest program I joined

Signed up for a new traffic exchange program.

I think this is the last one. From here I'm going to start getting in to more of the affiliate market than the traffic exchange market. There is no real money to be made in the traffic exchange market as a simple pleb. You're getting credits to view a bunch of web pages, but unless you have some other way of generating income from your own pages that just requires a bit of extra traffic, its a waste of time and energy.

Having said that, there are ways to make money with a traffic exchange, but its a lot of time and very small return for that time. Unless you run the TX yourself ;-)

So this latest one I signed up for is called "Traffic Syndicate 25" or ts25 and its an interesting prospect. Its not an auto surf program, its all manual, but that means the traffic is likely to be a little more qualified in my opinion. The other big change is that its not like most other traffic exchange programs I've noticed. Its actually more like a competition. Which makes you want to do more.

I definitely prefer Auto surfing (who wouldn't?) but ts25 is definitely a very cool idea and the competitive aspects of it keep me doing it even though its really quite tedious. In fact, the competitive aspects of it have got me hooked already. And I've only been using it a little over an hour. ;-)

So why did I sign up for this one instead of another auto surfer?

Traffic Exchanges are pretty boring. No matter what, sitting in front of a browser having page after page scroll by while you click on a pic to get the next one up is pretty tedious. And at the end of it, what are you going to do with all the credits you earn anyway? Sell them for $0.0001 each? Dump them all on your own website? You'd get a gazillion visitors who don't even read the page, just click on the link in the surf frame so they can get the next one up and earn the credit.

But if you consider that traffic exchanges really are just about generating raw traffic, not valuable traffic, then that is understandable. Being able to cash in your credits for real coin is just a bonus these companies offer. They don't actually want you to, but they're willing to do so given you've put the effort in to earn them.

But for the most part, there is no real incentive for anyone to go with a manual surf traffic exchange.

Unless its ts25.

Seriously, the competitive aspects of this exchange essentially makes browsing these sites bearable. ;-) The more sites you view, the higher your rank. The higher your rank, the closer to being in the next syndicate up the line. Consider this... Those in the highest ranked syndicate that have earned the most credits have a downline of 2500 people.

Mumbo jumbo bullshit. Sounds like Amway to me.

Yeah, thats the part I'm struggling to get around. All these programs and schemes are really not any different to how Amway works. Your upstream gets a share of your pie. Your downstream gives you a share of their pie. If you don't do anything in a period, you get nothing.

I guess when you think about it, thats not entirely wrong. But at the same time, I dont like the idea of making someone else rich off the sweat of my back. Kind of why I can't work in a normal 9-5 job like most people. If I'm doing the work, I should be the one getting the return.

So I've changed my view in regards to Traffic Exchanges... Instead of looking at it as a way of earning coin, I'm going to look at it as a way of competing for rank on ts25. Oh, and for generating traffic to my normal business websites. And I know how to easily achieve that.

I'll use multiple autosurfers to feed the ts25 account. I'll then use the ts25 account to feed my business website. I don't much care about how good the traffic is or isn't, but I gotta spend the credits some how ;-) By using the auto surfers to generate referrals to the ts25 account for free credits, I'll then be able to build a passive credit earnings. I won't have to do anything but leave the auto surfers running in their own little window.

So while all this is going on, I'll start looking around for an affiliate program that will generate me some money. I should also start utilizing the affiliate programs I already have been a member of for a long time. That includes Amazon.com, GPStore and Paypal. Will get on to all that later. Right now I have to go do real work. :-\

24 or so hours, whats it been like?

Well, for raw traffic of little worth or merit, traffic exchanges (tx) really do seem to work

Its now been a little over 25 hours since I started this blog. Using some of the credits I've already earned with NoMoreClicking, I've been generating traffic to this site. In that time, I've generated over 600 hits to this blog. Pretty much all of which (with a few exceptions) came from the traffic exchange.

I'd call that a good first day. However, as expected, that traffic in and of itself has generated absolutely no income from this blog ;-)

Theres a simple reason as to why.

Pretty much everyone using a traffic exchange is going to be using auto-surfing. For the most part, many of them have a wait of around 15-30 seconds on any given viewed site. After that time elapses, the next site is loaded automatically. Its simple and ruthless. The end user doesn't have to do anything at all except leave the browser running.

With the advent of tabbed browsing, they don't even have to be looking at the pages as they roll on by. The rotation scripts will make sure the windows aren't minimized at each new site and will bring the window to the front, but they can't change the focus of the tabs. So by browsing around in another tab, the rotation script is still running, but its not interferring with your browsing experience in any real or significant way. Its also easy to get around the minimize/foreground issue by adjusting the javascript settings of the browser.

About the only thing that might cause issue here is the number of notices about cookies. But for me thats not an issue given that I block all cookies unless its a site I'm a regular on.

Of course, not everyone uses the same setup. I've noticed that 64% of the traffic to this blog has been from people using Internet Explorer. So they're likely to be allowing most of the cookies silently and the chances of them having changed their javascript settings are slim.

What has occured to me is that given most of these people are using Internet Explorer, it would be extremely easy for someone to inject a malicious website in to the stream. This would make it pretty easy to get spyware/adware installed on peoples browsers without them ever knowing. It seems that blind trust is the order of the day.

I also notice that a lot of the sites are specifically marketing adverts. They're designed to grab your attention and get you to click on something. They're not information sites or anything even remotely close to that. They're either selling a product, advertising a casino or trying to get you to sign up to another affiliate or marketing scheme. Traffic Exchangers are very common. In fact, they appear to make up the majority of the pages viewed in my rotation over the past day. And every traffic exchange or other GetPaidTo (GPT) site listed there is put on by a user with their own referral ID instead of the company itself.

This is viral marketing at its purest.

At the moment I haven't taken on any other programs just yet. Aside from the affiliate programs I've always been a part of, this is the only one I've used so far.

I think the next order of the day is to do what Dee suggested and try an affiliate program where I can sell products in exchange for real coin. Not just credits for traffic thats of no real value.

However, first I'm going to sign up to one more traffic exchanger so I can start getting referrals ;-) The good ol' infinite loop ;-)

Initial Observations

So I've now been using NoMoreClicking for almost a full 24 hour period. What do I actually think of it?

Slow. Tedious. Painfully boring.

But it generates so much traffic.

The hardest part at the moment is trying to decide what program to try next. I've seen a few that interest me, but I'm not entirely sure I want to travel the PTR (Paid to Read) email path. My inbox is struggling with the spam load as it is. Adding more on top of that and then actually having to weed the ones that will earn me coin from the ones that are just unsolicited isn't exactly an endearing prospect.

So I'm looking at other options that are around. At the moment, I'm thinking that the best and most likely way for me to earn some coin is with referrals to the various programs. I can sign up to an autosurf program, but thats not exactly going to make me much coin. Just generate a lot of traffic for my websites.

Which leads me on to an observation about the traffic.

Like pretty much every webmaster, I put counters on my sites so I can gather easy traffic data without having to parse through endless logs. Its SOP for pretty much everyone. The counters are different. I prefer to think of them as bugs, but that suggests spying, which its not.

Anyway, since signing up to NoMoreClicking and generating a whole heap of traffic to this blog, I've noticed a trend. Its very rare that people using the service actually look at or read the page thats opened. In fact, its so rare that I don't think any single person thats seen one of my sites in their rotation has actually read even the front page presented to them.

The other thing I have noticed is that the same sites get shown to the same people over and over and over in a single session. The person may not even be watching what they're looking at, just getting the same info over and over.

So my initial observation about the whole AutoSurfing world boils down to one thing. Its not so much about advertising as it is about generating traffic. For example, right now I'm typing this in to the browser while I have a seperate browser window scrolling through the adverts. I'm not giving it my undivided attention, but I am glancing at it now and then if something catches my eye.

And there lies the point. The flashiest website is going to be the one that catches more eyes, and therefore gets more real hits from people that open the site up outside of the rotators frame. This leads me to some interesting conclusions about this whole marketing strategy.

Here is a simple run down of how it works.

AutoSurfing is simply a framed web page with a counter on it. When the counter expires, another site is loaded in the main frame. The counter ticks down, then another site is loaded. Wash, rinse, repeat adnauseum.

For every two sites you visit this way, you will receive 1 credit back. A credit is essentially a bartering tool. You can use it to generate traffic to your site or you can save them up and sell them back to the Traffic Exchange site (or even other people.) For ever one credit you spend, you can get one view of your site. By assigning credits to your site, you're guaranteed to generate large amounts of traffic. Some of whom might be interested in your content and decide to stick around.

Of course, the obvious use for this is to generate traffic to an online web store of some kind. You do need to have the patience to sit there and keep track of your rotator window. There are some dodgy sites that break the frames or start trying to throw popups everywhere and so on.

The services are not stupid, but they are most definitely basic. Looking at all the various options out there, I can see why people would set themselves up doing this. Its not a dumb way to make money at all. It is a lot of effort if you're running the site, but it is a good way to earn coin.

However, being the schmuck that sits there with the rotator window open is probably the slowest way in the world to earn coin on the side. It won't be me much longer I think.

The Beginning

Well, one of the things that has long been on my mind is how to earn money using only the web to do so. Given the state of the economy in New Zealand, I figure any extra income from overseas has got to be a good thing. :-)

There are a lot of ways to make money online if you know where to look. So I have started looking.

The purpose of this blog is basically for me to document and track my own progress and maybe provide a place where people get get information from a real person that actually does use and will try a lot of the different methods of earning money.

More in the permalink

I cannot guarantee that it will be all peaches and cream, and I don't expect that it will earn me a lot of money in the process, but every little bit helps.

I will link to all the services I use, as well as many of the various useful resources I'm finding along the way.

I'm a beginner when it comes to this whole industry. Thus the reason for the blog. I want to document it right from the start with my thoughts and impressions as I go along with it. Whether anyone agrees with me or not is irrelevant. This is just about my observations and impressions. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm so very much a beginner that I only really started participating as of Monday, 12 December 2005. In that time I've already generated a substantial amount of traffic to my business website just from doing nothing more than browsing the web myself. This is one of the primary purposes of the traffic exchange platforms and something I find to be of great benefit to those that take advantage of it.

Unfortunately this isn't entirely useful to me. My business website is targetted primarily at New Zealand users and the traffic is coming mostly from overseas users.

However, the traffic it generates for this site is substantial already and hopefully will prove useful for everyone.