Ch 10. What Are Traffic Exchanges and Safelists?

What is this all about?  It's about marketing. In particular, online marketing.

As we already know, businesses need customers to come and buy their products.  But that can only happen if customers know that the business and the products exist.  How is that going to happen?  By marketing, of course.  But there's more!

Let's say the business creates an advert.  Where is that advert going to be seen?  Where can the business promote itself? It could use TV.  Newspapers.  Magazines.  Radio.  As we've seen, all these things cost money, and not all of them work today as well as they used to in times gone by.  

So how about on the internet?  They could create a web page, but again, no-one is going to see it unless ... unless what?... unless ... Oh! Yes. You've guessed it ... unless they advertise it.  Marketing, again.

Are we running in circles here?  We certainly are, Ollie!

Traffic Exchanges

So here's a neat idea.  Remember back in Ch 7, we asked someone selling peas if they'd sell our carrots if we agreed to sell their peas on our carrot stall?  Well that's a traffic exchange.  "I'll look at your ad if you look at mine".

There are literally hundreds of Traffic Exchanges out there, good, bad and indifferent.  Every one of them carries hundreds, thousands, of ads.  If you are looking for something, the TE is the place to look for it.  We'll come back to this in a moment.

Safelists

The logic of a safelist is very similar to that of the TE, but goes one step further.

The business would love to send you (and everyone else in the world) an email about itself and its product.  It faces two problems.  One, it doesn't know your email address (unless they acquire it somehow).  Two, if they do manage to send you one then you'll scream "SPAM!" and they'll get shut down.  Sending emails without permission is illegal.  On a separate, but related note, this needs to happen soon with the telephone (both landline and mobile) to end those automated PPI calls.

Anyway, getting back to safelists, the safelist is a list of email addresses that people have given voluntarily to say "Yes, you can tell me stuff".  The list is "safe" in the sense that sending emails to members of the list is "safe" from prosecution under SPAM regs because permission has been given.  

The business joins the list so it can send an email, and in return it agrees to accept emails sent to it.  As with the TE, "I'll read your email if you read mine".

The Paradox

So that's Traffic Exchanges and Safelists in a nutshell.  Are we all still on board?  So, what use can we make of this information?  

The answer is TRAFFIC.  The purpose of these tools is to generate "traffic", "visitors", "flow", "leads".  These are all different words for the same thing.  If no-one visits a website or a shop then the business dies.  The business can squeeze a customer or two from a handful (or bucketful, or shedload) of visitors.  But no visitors equals no customers.  

A business must generate traffic, no matter how, no matter where, it has to have traffic.  And these tools generate traffic in boatloads.  But there's a paradox, which I hope you've spotted already.  

You haven't?  Well, consider this:-

You were selling carrots, remember?  So you joined a TE or a Safelist and blasted your ad for carrots to millions of people.  Soon they'll come surging to your stall. 

You'd think.

In return, you agreed to look at ads from people selling all sorts of stuff - peas, boats, umbrellas, body-building drinks, ... the list is endless.  So you do what?  You bin them.  After all, you're only interested in sending out your ad.  You don't give a stuff about what they're selling.  Well, guess what?  That's exactly what they're doing.

The paradox is ... nobody is looking at anything!  Bummer!

The unParadox

Fortunately for you, that is not your problem.  It would be, if you carried on selling carrots.  But you've had a better idea, haven't you?  Yes?  Haven't you?

Of course you have.  You've realised the paradox, and you've decided to sell ... wait for it ... you've decided to sell... TRAFFIC!  Yay!  Hallelujah!  You've finally realised that, since every business needs traffic, you'll sell them traffic.  Brill!  Now they'll read your ad.  Now they won't bin your email.  Forget selling carrots.  Sell traffic.

Next Step

So now you need some proper, detailed, information on how to get this thing up and running.  Fortunately I can give you everything you need.  And I will charge you not one single cent.  Not now.  Not ever.  I won't ask for your credit card details.  This is not "buy now or never see this offer again".  There's no "Buy today or the price will double tomorrow".

The information is here for all time - come back in a week, a month, a year, it won't have changed.  A real business opportunity does not just appear and disappear on the breeze.  It does not require "act now or it's gone".  A real business is solid, stable, durable, lasting, permanent, reliable.  Exactly what you'd expect.   

Why am I making the offer?  How can I offer it?  Simple!  

Once you start to make a little money you will want to ramp it up.  I'm happy for you to start for free and get a taste.  I don't care if you play with it for a year.  You will make money.  How much is entirely up to you.  Whether it's a little or a lot, it costs me nothing for you to do that.

Once you realise that you can make serious money at it, and you feel ready to earn that money, then you will want to upgrade.  For that there's a fee, but you can afford it.  From the money you already made.  It's a one-off, single payment of $37 (no, not $37 a month). Just a one-off purchase of the keys to the bigger engine.

From that point on you will be upgrading various parts of the system, paid for out of profits you are already making, as and when you see the advantages of doing so.  You won't be paying me, but I will get a commission on those upgrades from the people you do buy from.  That's where my real money comes from, and you will be able to replicate the same process in your own business.

But not until you've driven the car round the block a few times and you know what you are doing, and you know why you are doing it.  More importantly, not until you realise that it is a real and genuine business, good enough to offer to others, like I'm offering to you.

FYI

What follows here will make no sense to you until you have played for a while.  I've put it here to help you see your future path.  Come back here, at any time during your career as an Internet Marketer.  It will help you consider your "next step" at any point on your journey.

TE's and Safelists have many "levels".  All start with "Basic/Free", and you should not move up from "free" unless and until you have evaluated the advantages of doing so.  Don't let anyone push you.  All upgrades have a price, and all deliver increased payouts.  It is always a trade-off.  But it is always the top levels that get the biggest payouts.

Personally, I always upgrade to the highest level I can afford at the time.  Sometimes it's the top level, sometimes not.  Today I am upgraded - to the highest levels - in dozens of TE's and Safelists.  This is where you want to be aiming for - eventually.  You can't do it straightaway, some of them are seriously expensive, so you move up a level at a time.  You will know, for yourself, when the time is right for you.  The rule is simple.  If it costs $10.00 and pays more than £10.01, do it. Else don't.

Every TE or Safelist you join will make you an OTO (One Time Only) offer.  Beware!  Like everything else, some are good, some are not.  Initially you will have no basis on which to judge whether good or bad.  In my experience they will always come back with another offer later - sometimes a better one, or one just as good.  Don't be taken in by the warning "You will never see this offer again".  It will be true because one will be a "September Offer" and the next will be an "October Offer".  But the content will be identical.

Epilogue

There's nothing more in my hands to give.  Click the graphic below and download everything you need to get started.  I won't be hassling you to act on it.  Take your time, read it through, watch the videos, think about it.  Discuss it with people whose opinions you trust (but not the "know it all down the pub" who's "been there and done it all" and is now living proof of wisdom - not!).

It's your life.  You live it your way.   For me Internet Marketing is a blast, and I wish I'd known about it years ago.

Happy Hunting.