How to use traffic exchange to earn money on the internet

Traffic is the most precious thing on the internet. Traffic can generate impressions, sales, can promote ideas, thoughts, can connect people, teams, etc. Traffic exchange is the mutual surfing of other people webpages. Someone sees the content of other people and in exchange other people see what he/she display on his/her website. One can utilize the traffic generated by traffic exchange and earn money through the internet. In this post I will show you some ways to do that.

Sales through traffic
Provided that you surf a lot you get lots of credits to use. Once a credit is used one people visits your website. More traffic leads to more visits. More visits can potentially lead to more sales. If you have a website where you sell products and services you need traffic in order to build sales. If more people visit your online mall, it is more likely that you find people interested in what you sell. So more traffic means more potential customers.

Impressions through traffic
You can use traffic exchange to share ideas, thoughts, to exhibit your talents and your services. If you are an expert in something, you may utilize increased traffic to “sell” yourself. By doing so you may reap potential future benefits. Suppose for example you are a consultant in a specific business area. You can advertise yourself through the net and gain more visibility and recognition. Visibility and recognition will eventually lead to more demand of your services and whatever you have to offer – give – say – etc.

Earning though advertising
On fine and very popular way to monetize on a website is by selling advertising space. There are many web services providing every website owner the opportunity to host ads of their clients. Traffic Exchange may boost the traffic of such a site. If the visits to a website that hosts ads will increase so will the advertising earnings. One can either earn through the visits of other traffic exchange users or through any clicks to the ads (that are more likely to be clicked when the traffic is increased).

CSR and True Devotion…

Here is a tough question: Is it really possible for a firm to show real devotion to a cause or social initiative? I mean real and authentic interest. Do you believe that this can be the case? Most of the companies that have implemented a CSR program claim that they are truly interested in solving or contributing to a social problem. They do not cite as their main reason for a CSR campaign the branding and marketing benefits that by all means seek. I personally believe that almost all the companies that are involved in a corporate social responsibility initiative and cause have as their prime goal branding and marketing benefits. However, in this pursuit for differentiation and advantage they can make a truly great impact in the society. I also hold the opinion that there might be a very small percentage of corporations that are devoted to a cause because of the cause itself and not for all the potential (marketing and branding) benefits that they may reap.

Blogging for Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Blogs can disclose information about the firm’s social responsibility campaigns and initiatives. Such actions deliver very effective messages to a greatly wide range of stakeholders. Social Responsibility Initiatives and Programs add a really great value in a brand name. The whole process may be done with a formal or an informal way of blogging and the disclosure of information may be delivered with the same style.


Some examples

• Regular posting on everyday initiatives’ progress

• Posting about some major and minor events

• Posting about new initiatives undertaken

• Posting about weekly – monthly aims / goals and their results

• Posting thoughts and ideas for new initiatives or improving old campaigns

• Posting meetings’ outcomes

• Posting self-assessment on how one is contributing on a CSR initiative

• Posting about how a team devoted to a social cause works together

• Posting about tough problems and challenges that appear and need solutions

Interactivity

A blog about corporate social responsibility enable great interactivity and feedback from every potential stakeholder group and that can become a strategic competitive advantage that will take a corporation a step ahead of even the most innovative and creative (in terms of CSR and marketing) competitors.

Input

There is a great increase in the recent number of posts on my blog. I realize that this is the outcome of a lot of input in the last few weeks. I also realize that this input comes from the fact that the camp that I am transferred now is near a city while my previous camp was on a very small village. While I am out of the camp and wandering around the city I see a lot of things and these things may trigger my thoughts. Even the most trivial thing or fact can lead to a chain of thoughts and ideas which may gradually evolve to something bigger. On the other hand, living in a small village can greatly restrain your thought, outcome and your potentials; unfortunately that’s a very dangerous situation for one’s personal development.

Professional blogging

Blogging for money or fame? There are two types of professional bloggers: Those who blog for money and those who blog to brand their businesses or themselves.

The former earn money mainly from advertising and sales. They advertise through an advertising network such as google Adsense, BlogAds, etc, or they manually arrange advertising deals.
The later blog about products, services and information that they sell through their blog or another linked site. The sales model may be consisted of their own made products or affiliate products.

Welcome to the free world

Welcome to the new world of free products, services and information. This is the concept that governs the web 2.0 and the new media. It has started being implemented in the offline world too. This is the outcome of too much production and offer and a modern sales technique. Actually all those free stuff eventually lead to the generation of more sales. This may sound somehow contradictory but as soon as the reasoning is explained it is obvious. Free stuff works as a lure. All that wealth of information can help a potential customer to decide if a product or service is suitable for him/her. Moreover it can be a dynamic presentation on the salesman toolbox.

Examples
Let’s give two examples to make the above statement more clear and comprehensible; one concerning an online business and one concerning the regular offline business. The online example: suppose you want to market / sell a new piece of software, you can write an ebook or a series of posts, videos, podcasts, etc. about the procedure or the function that the software you sell does. Then you can connect the written procedure or function with your software (via link or reference) and have an effective sales and marketing tool. The offline example (just to show that this technique is exactly as efficient as in the online world) might be the following: you have a marketing firm specialized in public relations, you can provide a sort of free services as a starting series of PR campaigns and in order to start a potential client base and to create a relationship with them.

Future Predictions
The trend of “everything is free” will continue to grow rapidly in terms of customer consumption and marketing technique. Each of those products, services and pieces of information will have a referring part that is the underlying hidden marketing / sales message.

Social Causes

One great use of social media and user generated content of any form (text, audio and especially video) is to support a cause and a social initiative. Corporations in particular can utilize that form of communication to publicize and enhance awareness of the cause and their contributions as well. Corporate social initiatives and corporate social responsibility are current trends that have great impact in brand reputation and equity. I believe that businesses will realize the potential benefits that social media could add to their CSR campaigns and start utilizing these as strategic tools.

An example of my previous statement can clarify what I mean. Suppose you are a business that starts a new social initiative, for example a race against deforestation. You can host videos and other forms of content (such as photos, text comments, etc.) of local people and your employees planting trees. On each event you plan and host you can add valuable content of that kind to inspire more people to join your efforts, to show that while doing these activities you can have fun and to show that you support and embrace your community and its members. These videos or media of any kind you choose to implement can also have a great educational value.

Business Strategy Evolution

Last year I had written a series of posts about the possible evolution of business strategy. A great blogger I know, Dmitry Linkov, was writing his post-graduate assignment on this topic and these were some of my thoughts about the subject (you can find my thoughts here, here and here). Anyway, thinking of my ideas about business strategy evolution it seems that I have not included what these days seems so obvious: social media. Social media are and will definitely be included in the short and medium-term focus of business strategy and innovational – creative thinking. In fact, I foresee social media as key elements that corporations and organizations will implement as core competencies and they will take advantage of their users’ generated content as business strengths.

Great Brands…

Great brands not only sell like crazy; they also provide a unique consumer experience. They tell a story. A great brand name is Warcraft. It started as a game and it has evolved into a whole philosophy. Warcraft originally was a strategy pc-game. There are 3 series of warcraft: warcraft 1 (Orcs and Humans), warcraft 2 (Tides of Darkness and the expansion: Beyond the Dark portal), warcraft 3 (The Rhein of Chaos and the expansion: The frozen throne). Later came the ultimate MMRPG World of Warcraft and its latest expansion The Burning Crusade. But Blizzard (the computer game manufacturer company) does not sell only software but also books, comics and other merchandise. Blizzard has created a successful brand build upon a wonderful story. It’s that story that sells like crazy. There are many other similar titles both for the strategy and the MMRPG game that simply cannot compete warcraft because of the strong community it has build over the years and is based on an evolving and absolutely consistent story. Figures appeared in previous versions of the game appear again in the multiplayer game giving the players a strong feeling of consistency and a flashback. When one remembers one in-game character from its childhood switching to another massive multiplayer role playing game is getting almost impossible. There is strong emotional connection with the game. That is the ultimate branding technique. Connect the brand with the users in such a strong emotional relationship that can never be replaced.

Thoughts on blogging

Blogging should be free of writing rules. Free as thinking is. By applying rules to the writing style of a post is like setting barriers and limitations to thought. It's the mental picture that matters, the idea or the point one is trying to make, not the syntax or grammar. Of course these matter too but they are less important. Suppose you want to express an idea, let's use the depiction of a house as an example, you can take a photo of the house or you can draw it with many different ways but at the end it will be a house. So when you want to express an idea or a view try focusing on the transmission of the idea to the audience rather than get lost in words and expressions.

Satisfaction from work

Doing a job that you like is very critical for your well-being and mental health on the long term. These thoughts came up as a result of all my previous experiences and the trigger was my military service in which I have to do a lot of unpleasant tasks each and every day. Each moment of the day I realize that I definitely cannot live the rest of my life doing a job that I don't like or even worst I hate.

An additional point I want to make is that I can only think of three possibilities concerning job satisfaction: you can have a pleasant job which you enjoy, an unpleasant job which you don't like but you have to do for living and a job which some people may consider pleasant but doesn't suit you (for example a job that you were forced to practise due to some reasons). While I am thinking all these I am once more feeling extreme happiness for studying business administration and choosing to become a marketer.

Latest news...

I am planning to make some major changes in my blog when I am dismissed from the army and released from any obligations. Right now all I am trying is to keep up to date with some of the blogs that I am a reader. For that purpose I use a little complex system since I have no computer or Internet access: I download the feeds from these blogs with a feed aggregator, convert them to html pages and then transfer them into my mobile. Coming Back to my goal for blog renewal, I have many fresh ideas that I hope to implement. Although I have not set specific goals as concerns the renewal, I have a general overall picture of how I wanted to be and what new features and metrics it should obtain. Changes will refer to blog's design. By design though I don't mean blog's appearance and interface exclusively but organisation, new features and functionality as well. Of course the name of the blog and it's URL will change too to reflect something more relevant to marketing and to be eye-catching. Finding a great title is a really tough challenge but I am working on it and I hope that I 'll come up with something good. More details about my ideas and the whole concept will be released in the future. All I want right now is to retain the current enthusiasm and excitement I have and I am sure I will bridge the gap of my absence. Sure I need a lot of feedback and input on this project so everyone is warmly invited to comment, suggest, disagree and join my effort in any way.

Customer complaints

How do you handle customer complaints? Do you take them into account?


Having a box and a pack with complaint forms in the corner of your store doesn't sound like a proactive way of managing customer complaints and measuring satisfaction! Do you offer a form with every product or service you deliver? What about customers who are in their own place? Do they have access to these forms? Do you personally ask each and every customer about the level of service and satisfaction they perceive when they consume your products and services? These are proactive ways of handling customer complaints. You need to show real and authentic interest to your customers. You should encourage them to air their grievances. Bear in mind that your goal is not just a one time purchase but repeated sales. How are you going to achieve that if you have dissatisfied customers?


I know many people (I also am one of those!) that when they get dissatisfied with a service or product they will never buy from that company ever again. You certainly don’t want this happen. Furthermore, these customers do not complain or argue with you. They just leave quietly. You need to feel when a customer is dissatisfied or even not pleased with your level of service and try to change his/her attitude before he/she switches brand and left you wandering what went wrong. Complaint management is not as obvious as it sounds mainly because you don’t always get those disappointment messages. So next time you interact with a customer try to be a little more thorough, ask questions, view from the customer’s angle and be proactive.

Paid to Read Industry

In this post I express some thoughts about the industry of “paid to read” stuff.

The “Paid to Read” phenomenon has been taking place for a while on the internet. Paid to read is meant to refer to an advertisement or a message carrying an advertisement (on it) in which someone is being paid just for reading. That kind of “business” can take several forms; most of them are emails, on-site ads and links. There is always an intermediate part between the advertiser and the ad viewer. That part publishes the advertiser ads and offer one portion of the advertising revenue to the viewers. In that way, the service provider motivates people to read ads. Both parts; the intermediary and the client benefit; it’s a win-win situation. Some questions, arise though; for example what about the benefits of the advertiser? Does he/she win? Are one’s ads effective? Below, I try to offer some perspectives…

One can state that as long as people read the ads just for the money incentive there is no real attention to the advertising message but only passive clicking actions. On the other hand, advertisements not including any incentive have the same appealing: no one seems to really enjoy seeing ads. You may be amused with some ads but I bet you are not looking forward to turn your TV on or browse a magazine just to see ads. Ads are always distracting. They try to distract you from whatever you were doing to pay attention to them. In most occasions that is the case. It’s Seth Godin’s distraction marketing theory. Consequently, whether there is, or there is not an incentive (of any kind), people in most cases do not authentically look forward to read ads.

Thus coming to the very first question about the effectiveness of a “Paid to Read” advertising message, if an ad is being placed just to inform consumers about the existence of a product or service, I hold the opinion that both ways of advertising (paid and non paid ads) are almost the same (as concerns effectiveness).

As concerns brand preference and reminding ads my views are: Usual advertising costs a lot more expensive in traditional media that Paid to Read ads. That may lead to the association of a brand being advertised through traditional ways with high value and successful product / service. On the contrary, cheap advertising of paid to read messages might cast a lightly negative impact to the viewers. The previous statements concern ads that are trying to remind the product / service to the user (or call to act) and to improve conceived brand value. Contrary, when there is too much clutter on reminding advertising it may affect viewers of traditional media channels negatively while this is not the case for viewers that get paid to see them. In other words, “Paid to Read” ad networks can effectively bear a lot of ad clutter while other common networks cannot.


…some more views:

Most common and simple forms of “Paid to Read” services refer to emails containing a direct link or/and an embodied advertising.

I personally use some Paid to Read networks, I have been paid a few dollars. Of course in this industry no one should expect to get rich.

Almost all of the “Paid to Read” networks offer user referral systems.

There is also the “Paid to Click” alternative industry. This is very similar to the “Paid to Read” stuff. I will not analyze it (at least in this post).

Traditional products’ marketing & a practical advice on how to become more effective in your business (whatever field you are in).

In the weekend I and my girlfriend were on vacation on a small town (very popular as a tourist attraction). One day in a traditional tavern they gave as after lunch a shot of a traditional drink. It was a sweet liqueur which helps one to digest food. Later on that day as we wandered through the main road of the town which is full of little shops that sell traditional products and souvenirs, we found that drink (which is called Tentoura) and we both instantly bought one bottle for our relatives. It was a very impulsive purchase. The same kind of purchases has occurred to us many times in the past and surely has happened to most of the people. The point here is that one “clever” shop owner of traditional products may exploit those impulsive purchases. He/she may make a deal with tavern owners to supply them for free with Tentoura on the condition that they give each client a shot of that drink after lunch or dinner. It’s a win-win situation; both the tavern owner and the shop owner earns from that kind of strategic alliance. I firmly believe that the shop owner will boost up his/her sales. Thing here is that (I believe) it’s hard to imagine such a marketing technique if you weren’t told about (at least it didn’t occur to me).

I mention the above story because it led me to the following (and now very obvious to me) conclusions:
We often say that one should think from the customer’s perspective and get on his/her shoes to figure out more ways to service one and market to him/her. Personally I totally agree with the above statement; however how was it likely to me to think of the above (marketing) technique? I mean, ok, I am going to think from the customer’s point of view…hm …em …let’s put some ads in the town’s stations and populated places…hm… let’s post an article on traditional products in the local newspaper/magazine or website…etc. To think out of the box – off the beaten track is easy to say but sometimes hard to actually do. Just thinking from the customer’s perspective many times is not enough; one should simulate customer’s experiences: he must go on vacation (although he is in his origin), he must live and act as a customer and try the same experiences and actions. Thinking is not enough; one may need to acquire some input (feelings, thoughts, senses, impressions, etc.). How can one implement the above conclusion? Try to find out a solution/opportunity/challenge not only with thorough thoughts but by interacting with people, places, objects; get a lot of input from anything you get in contact with.

Advertising – Human Ads

Human Ads:
- Word of mouth
- Celebrity marketing
- Body advertisements (e.g. Tattoos of brands)
- Surname ads = name of brands (to change one’s surname to a brand’s name)

The first three are obvious and well-discussed. As concerns the forth, I have never seen that kind of advertising anywhere or heared of something similar. One day I thought that someone could just change his/her surname into a brand’s name for advertising purposes.

Offers for body advertisements can one find very often on Ebay.

Post’s deletion

Should one delete old posts of his/hers blog? What if one has changed writing style or topics in one’s blog? What if one has improved his/her style dramatically? Blogging of course will improve one’s writing skills as time goes by, should that guy erase the old “unacceptable” and bad posts of his? Or is he/she obliged to keep them since he/she used to think like that and these old posts are truths of one’s world? What if I changed my mind on something I believed or wrote on a previous post? Shall I hide my previous way of thinking? Shall I delete that post?

A Branding Dilemma

Suppose you have created your own super widget and you want it to spread it and to be branded and put on thousands of other blogs, websites, etc. Widget is consisted of one squared area with the widget’s main function in the center of that square. You then add a link (usually) on the bottom of this square which refers to your website (the widget’s webpage) and to the sign-up / register / download – get yours page. Now a real marketing dilemma is raised: Suppose your widget is called PerWid (i.e. Perfect Widget ;-)). Do you put PerWid’s logo and name on that bottom link or you just add a plain link that writes “get yours instantly”? There are 2 approaches in that problem: The branding approach which enforces us to use logo and widget’s name as much as possible for several advantages (brand awareness, brand recognition, brand repetition & recall) and the simplicity approach, the approach corporations like google use. The later approach is based on the fact that if one sees the widget and likes it, he/she will click the link to get one for himself/herself too. You don’t need to confuse him/her with logos, brands and marketing tricks. I like it, I download it, I use it! (I cite that this is the google’s approach because google use to have a very simple and plain interface; no extra graphics, impressive effects, sounds, colors, etc. It only has the name of the search engine and the search bar; real simple and real clever! Sometimes success comes out of unexpected, of surprisingly different and controversial. We used to think that if we add more buttons and more graphics and more stuff we give customers more options and more features and thus more satisfaction but is this so? Don’t we just confuse visitors?

Does simplicity approach has any meaning in this particular example (the widget application)? Or the “normal” marketing – branding approach is better? I really don’t have any answer to that question. Should one use the common approach or try to differentiate? Of course both approaches are right but one might be better. Which one do you think?

Hibernation

Days in Army: 183
Days left: 183
[Finally this blog woke up from deep hibernation for just a few moments. In a week I’ll be back in the camp again (away from the comfort ness of my home, lacking civilization and my normal life).]

To write and publish anything non fictional you need to read. In fact you need to read a lot. This blog is referred to the internet and marketing and in order to contribute my thoughts I definitely need to have a lot of input. The past 6 months that I’ve been in the army I’ve pushed myself to start posting again (in a process of firstly writing down on a notepad and then typing and posting on an internet café on the first available opportunity) but I found that I’ve lost contact with blogging and since I wasn’t informed and updated with current trends and the blogosphere in general I couldn’t be productive. During the past 6 months the last 3 ones I had computer access but no Internet connection (and no spare time at all!). These days, fortunately I am home relaxing and getting used to civilized life again. Life in army really sucks and I don’t want to remind myself that I have another full 6 months left.

While trying to fill my flash disk with RSS feeds so that I can read while in camp I found out many great marketing blogs which I will now start to read (whenever this is possible!). Now I am constantly trying to read all these feeds and compensate for all that lost time. Maybe at the end of these free days I write another post too…

Till next time I’ll get online take care and… keep blogging ;) !

Call of Duty

Like I said in the previous post I will be offline till July-August of 2007 due to military obligations (unfortunatelly military service is obligatory in Greece).