Tips: What to promote in traffic exchanges

The most important thing to remember is that there's a time limit on how long your page will be shown. Depending on the exchange, this can be anywhere from five to thirty seconds. This means that in order to be seen (and registered as a page view by the server on which it resides, for those of you concerned with page views), your page must load entirely within that allotted time. If it doesn't, the surfer doesn't see your page, and/or it doesn't count as a page view on the server. Worse, if your page is bloated with enormous grahpics, or loads an inordinate number of banners from other servers, you may very well freeze surfing for someone, they'll get angry and report your page, and your page will be removed from rotation.

But stop and think a moment ... what's the purpose of getting your page in front of a surfer in the first place? It's to make a sale, or capture a lead, or get a sign-up for your program. If your page doesn't load, you've failed. You didn't make a sale, you didn't capture a lead, you didn't get a sign-up ... and maybe you left a bad taste in the surfer's mouth. Maybe the next time he sees your page, he'll be disinclined to buy/give over his email address/sign up.

Is that page you're submitting bloated with huge graphics? No? There're only 32 small ones on it? Given that the majority of users are still on dial-up, do you think they can load those 32 small images in five seconds? (The answer: No! They can't.)

What should you do if your page is so huge it can't load in a decent, average, SHORT amount of time? Here are three ideas:

1. Break it up! Surfers seldom scroll down from the first page anyway. Break your giant page into several smaller ones. Submit each of the smaller ones instead. Admins are more likely to accept your page for rotation if it won't freeze someone's surfing session.

2. Make a splash page with a link to your giant page if, for some reason, you can't bear to break your giant page into smaller ones. Make yourself an eye-catching graphic with some attention-getting text and a link to the big page.

Here's an example of a splash page.

Some traffic exchanges offer you tools to make splash pages of your own. Here're a couple free ones:

TEToolbox ClickVoyager

That way, if you haven't the time (or the skills) to lay out a page of your own, you can throw one together in just a couple of minutes without knowing anything about Photoshop or HTML.

3. Ditch some of the graphics. Just because you can use enormous, flashing, animated graphics doesn't mean you should. Likewise the banners. Out of context, most banners will never be clicked anyway. If you want to have a prayer of getting your page loaded in the small window of time allowed, you've got to part with some of the non-essentials.

What is your message? Are you a photographer or an artist looking to sell some of your work? Great! Then put thumbnails on your page that link to larger versions the surfer can click if he's interested. If you try to load four 300dpi grahpics into the surfers' browser, there's a good chance it'll hang or crash. How can he buy when he's hung or crashed? (Hint: he can't.)

Is your message that you found this really great program and you'd like others to join? Then explain, with words, why it's so great and what the benefits are. Filling the page with music, animations, movies, and an annoying head that reads your text to the surfer not only won't impress him; it, too, may crash his browser, assuming it's even loaded before he clicks "Next!" in the surfbar. (And such pages aren't allowed on QuietHits anyway!)

Lots of surfers don't surf with Flash enabled. If your entire page consists of a Flash object, those folks will see a blank page. By using a splash page (a simple one, with text and a small picture), you can grab their attention first so they'll click the link to your Flash presentation if they're interested in seeing it.

Last tip: Make nice with the admin at the sites you surf. Read the instructions about what sites you may not put into rotation, and heed them. If the rules say "No pop-ups," then do not submit a site with pop-ups. If you continually submit sites which violate the rules, you become an adminstrative headache, and you don't want to be an adminstrative headache. Admins can be your friends, and if you annoy them by making them deaf, submitting sites which attempt to download viruses, which pop seven windows up in their faces, or aren't in a language they can read, you won't have made a friend of the admin. Read the rules before you click the "Submit" button. If your page violates one or more rules, then don't click "Submit." Your page will merely be rejected, and the admin will wonder why you can't follow simple rules. Is it because you think you can get away with something? Admins don't like people who try to get away with something. (Admins especially dislike people who try to do nefarious things via encoded HTML or JavaScript. We think those people stink, and we can't wait to click the giant red "DELETE" buttons on their heads.) Admins like people who read the rules, who play by the rules, who submit fast-loading pages which don't make the rest of the membership grouchy. (Grouchy members send a lot of emails detailing how unhappy they re.)

Bear in mind that admins know that 99.7% of members have the best of intentions. They don't hold that .3% against the others. Those .3% suuuure can ruin an admin's day, though. Don't be in that .3%. Just like in meatspace, we all gravitate to people we like; we want to help people we like. Likewise, people who annoy us, we try to avoid them. They need a sofa moved? We're not gonna be home that weekend! They need someone to pet-sit their dog? Sorry; we're allergic! Same goes online: if you make a nuisance of yourself, don't expect any favors.

Do you have a tip for me? Do you want to receive more tips on how better to use traffic exchanges to promote your product/list/program/whatever? Would you like to send this article to your own exchange members or blog readers? Feel free to drop me a note!

©2006-2007 Binky Melnik and QuietHits.com. All rights reserved.