WinterPerkins.com

It’s been quite a while since anything in Traffic Exchange Land has excited me, hence the “long pause” between posts. But this past week has been packed full of changes, huge announcements and more excitement than the year combined I think. If you’ve had your nose to the grindstone, and your ear NOT to the ground… you’ve missed a lot this week. Have no fear! I’m wrapping up all the big announcements in a nice little bow for ya. Ready?… Here we go!

Traffic Exchange Updates

Team surfing at Traffic Taxis

Ok, so a couple of days ago, David Foley unleashed a brand new feature at Traffic Taxis… Team Surfing. Team surfing is all the rage now, and I can promise you, you have not seen Team Surfing like this. It’s like Team Surfing on steroids…. way cool! The good news is, teams are still forming, so you have the perfect opportunity to jump in now and get your team together. If you like Team Surfing at ALL, do this. You’re gonna be amazed at how the popular feature works at Taxis. This is NOT your grandma’s Team Surfing folks. I sound sort of like an infomercial right now, but trust me, keep your eye on this one. It’s gonna be huge.

James Holmes takes over SWAT Traffic

Yes, you heard me right! James Holmes is now the owner of the beloved SWAT Traffic! A huge congrats to James first off… he’s been looking to get into TE ownership for almost a year now, and I can’t think of a better place for him to let his ideas flow. SWAT has been one of my favorite places to advertise for a long, long time, and I couldn’t be happier to know some really awesome changes are coming. James Holmes hosts a popular radio show and always has his feelers out in the industry. He has some super exciting changes in mind that I think will really skyrocket SWAT’s activity and membership! If you’re not already a member of SWAT Traffic, now is the time to get in there. If you are… keep your eyes peeled because you won’t want to miss what James has in store for us.

Sweeva introduces The SOTD

As if Sweeva could get any cooler right? Well now you can purchase a Site Of The Day slot! Sweevers earn 100 experience points daily for viewing the SOTD, which means… everyone is viewing it. It’s a full 30 second view, so plenty of time to get feedback, sign ups, subscribers, etc from your page view. This is a bit like a Start Page BUT even people that don’t surf Sweeva daily are logging in to get their 100XP daily for viewing the SOTD, so you’re reaching a wider range of people with that slot. Jon & Tim are even considering sending out a daily mail to Sweevers introducing the SOTD, so you could be directly in the spotlight, in everyone’s inbox… can we all say awesome?!

Start Xchange modifies Team Surfing, Get’s Into The Fall Spirit

Start Xchange has had their Team Surfing feature for a long time now. Tim made it even better this week with the introduction of some really cool new actions Team Leaders can take. There are new team competitions, team leaders can now appoint someone else as leader, disband the team, and more. If you haven’t tried Team Surfing at SXC, now is the time to spread your wings and do so.

Tim also put up his new Fall Surfing Icons, which isn’t huge news… but it is fun and festive no? I’m so ready for fall! Beautiful leaves, chilly nights, sweatshirts, hot chocolate, pumpkins, Halloween… oh yeah bring it on!

Must Have Tools Updates

If you haven’t heard by now, TE Toolbox is now owned 100% by Jon Olson & Tim Linden, and Affiliate Funnel is owned 100% by Paul Kinder & the KRM Team. No beef, no scandal or gossip to go along with this split. It was a business decision that allowed them to focus on these 2 programs that we know and love, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Great move guys, huge huge thumbs up!

TE Toolbox goes Unlimited, Slashes Prices & Dumbs Down

TE Toolbox is one of my absolute favorite helpers! I am a stats junkie lol I can’t get enough of them, and pure stats have saved me countless wasted hours and advertising money. I’d be lost without them! I track EVERYTHING. I track my splash/squeeze pages in every TE, Safelist, I track clicks on my blog. Yes, if you click here, I know it… I see you

I was super excited to hear about the changes happening in TET right now. They now have an Unlimited Plan option (umm yes of course I have it being the junkie I am), which means you can have unlimited sites in your rotators AND create unlimited trackers. The Unlimited Plan is surprisingly cheap so if you’re a tracker junkie like me… gotta have it! The other upgrade plan prices have been lowered too. They were already extremely affordable so I was surprised about the drop in price, but who doesn’t love to save more?

TET can be a bit confusing to use too, even for me. The great news is, Tim is working on simplifying TE Toolbox overall, 3 cheers for simple! The advanced features will still be there for the more techie folks out there, but for us that have no clue what to do with all that, our lives will be made much easier. If you’re not tracking your ads, you’re wasting money pure and simple. There’s never been a better time to take the plunge and start keeping stats!

Affiliate Funnel, bringing back the Magic Sauce

Affiliate Funnel is my other must must must have tool. I have learned so much there that I’ve been able to give Google Search a much needed break from me. Paul Kinder even attended this Saturday’s AF conference, and oh how we missed him! William Brant does a fantabulous job of hosting AF’s weekly seminars, but for a while now the magic has just been lingering under the surface. The good thing is, they’re aware of this, and they’re working super hard to bring back what we all love and miss.

AF is even sending out surveys to ask us what we love most, what we miss, what we think needs to be improved. If you missed the mailing with the survey link, just click below to take the survey and give your input! You even get a couple of really nice bonuses for submitting your ideas… so you’ll want those. You need to be a member to take part in the survey of course, and if you’re not a member yet, you can join by clicking this link here.

Click Here to participate in the Affiliate Funnel Survey

I am super psyched knowing that Affiliate Funnel will be back in full force and back the program I know and love so much. You will learn more in their AF conferences than you will from any ebook available to us… trust me… save your cash, hop in a conference!

Holy Cow that’s a lot of updates!

Whewwwwwwww I think I covered them all! Just when there was so much talk about the industry being dead, someone shakes the snow globe and we’re right back on track! There’s been so many announcements this week, it was a bit hard to keep up. I hope having them all here in one place is easier to digest, and gets you as pumped up as I am for the future. I’m literally on the edge of my seat (more like office chair), waiting to see what happens next. Things are heating up here, and we all benefit from that! Finally… some much needed change and progress. Kudo’s to all the Change Makers out there in TE Land!

Popularity: 33%

My post yesterday on the Dirty Tactics of Internet Marketing and How To Avoid Them really sparked a huge conversation. Tons of comments, lots of emails, even skype messages thanking me so much for bringing this topic to light. Because of the huge response, today I’d like to share even more examples of the methods being used to prey on newbies. Keep your eyes peeled for this tricky tactics!

The False Sense of Urgency

The Lie

The Truth

The Lie

The Truth

The Lie

The Truth

Multiple Daily eMails

For some reason, this practice is becoming widely used and abused by many Traffic Exchange owners. You know the drill… you get your daily Traffic Exchange email, and not even 10 minutes later you get the “Oops I forgot blah blah blah,” or the “Oh I’m so stupid, I forgot,” mails.

Now I don’t mean to say that this doesn’t really happen. I’ve forgotten to include a link, or send the wrong link once in a great while. But every single day? Every single time you send an email you screw it up? If you are that clueless as to how to get your emails sent out correctly, with the correct information, that often… maybe you shouldn’t be running a Traffic Exchange or be in control of the mailings. I’m just saying… come on.

The REAL reason this is done, is because it keeps the site in front of your face. It brings more surfers in immediately. It gives them a reason to email you all day long instead of just mailing once and hoping more people read and act accordingly.

I’m confused as to why this is so effective (assuming that it is effective) because to me it is beyond annoying. Please don’t underestimate my intelligence by pretending to forget something in every single mail. Mail me once to let me know about your promotion of the day. If I like it, I’ll come surf; if not, I’ll pass on the promotion. Don’t bombard me with emails all day long because you didn’t get the results you wanted from your first email. Or at least title your email subject truthfully: “I didn’t get enough surfers in here with the first email, so let’s see how many fishies I can catch with this one!”

Exclusive/Private Invitations By eMail

While it’s nice to think you’re important enough to be invited personally to take part in a product or website launch, giveaway event, or seminar, trust me… we are not that important to the promoter! There is nothing exclusive about the emails you receive inviting you by “Private Invitation Only.”

Do not be fooled! These emails go out to every single subscriber on that list. You were not hand picked or personally invited. It sucks to find out your importance ranks about as high as anyone else on their list. The only exclusive aspect of these invitations are that you’re subscribed to this particular list… that’s it!

If someone wants to personally invite you to take part in anything, you’ll receive a personal email, a Skype message, a contact on your blog… not a mass email.

When you’re new, these exclusive invitations make you feel special, make you feel important. They do exactly what they are meant to do; make you stop, open the email, read it all, and of course jump into this private event! Don’t fall for it… it’s most likely 100% open to the public.

Exceptions

There will always be exceptions to the rule. When a program launches for the first time, it’s very likely they will have a launch special discounted offer. There’s a possibility that you really won’t see an upgrade offer this cheap again… so take notice of those, and take advantage if you can. If you can’t, you will see discounted offers later, maybe just not that cheap.

Humans make mistakes, we all do. It’s totally possible to forget a link in an email or even include the wrong link. Accidents happen, and that’s acceptable. I’m speaking strictly of the repeat offenders that are using this as a common practice on a regular basis. There is no truth in their “mistake,” it is total BS.

When you get a little more well known around here, you actually will get personal invitations to take part in website and product launches. It’s really exciting and an honor! If you do not get invited personally, it is not exclusive.. it’s a mass mailing, no more no less.

There are many, many tricky tactics used in Internet Marketing. These are just a few to watch out for. Be safe out there, and bring your boots. The BS can get extremely deep to wade through!

Popularity: 31%

Do me a favor… look at your inbox. Does it look similar to this?

**ALERT** Only 18 Left, 50% discount, less than 24 hours

Internet Marketing Just Got Replaced… UH OH!

Watch This & You Can Literally Be Making Money This Afternoon!

Winter, 1,000 Backlinks A Month. Really

These are actual subjects pulled from my personal inbox. Chances are, yours looks about the same. What’s all the hype about? Just marketing, plain and simple. Internet Marketing seems to be a world filled with dirty, back alley tactics, but is it really that much different from real world applications? Hardly!

Take a look at infomercials… they are geared to target you when you’re sleepy, your defenses are low, and they all claim to have the secrets of xyz, the most amazing thing ever, a product you can’t do without! By taking advantage now, we’re not going to charge you $100, not even $80, not even $60… you get all this for the low low price of $19.99. AND if you act now, you get xyz (a $50 value)… free!!!!!!

Now how familiar does this sound? Almost every marketing email in my inbox follows the same exact pattern. It’s something that will blow my mind, I can’t live without it, I get it for the low price of not $239, not even $99, not even $49… you get all this for the low price of $27 (maybe even free). AND for acting now I get a bazillion ebooks (that I’ll probably never read) included free!!!!!

See the connection? Marketing is a dirty job. Marketing is full of liars, full of fluffed up figures and stats, full of amazingly convincing ad copy designed 100% to get you to pull out those wallets, dig deep, spend it even if you don’t have it. These products (for the most part) are NOT designed to help you succeed; they are designed to make the creators money… period.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some really wonderful ebooks, programs and websites out there. I’ve gotten tons of help from the right books! There are many helpful tools out there, it’s just sifting through the crap to find the treasures.

Does marketing really have to be this grimy? Do you really have to sink to this level to be a successful Internet Marketer? The answer is NO! You can be successful by recommending products, services, and websites that you actually use, and that are helpful to you, thus will be helpful for your list.

The focus should not be on just making you a little cash here and there, the primary focus should be helping your readers succeed! Helping someone that is newer to this game than you are succeed in their efforts here is the best success you could have as a marketer. You might not make a sale on day one, you might not make a sale from that person within a month. That’s ok… you have made a friend, you have made a connection with another human being that now trusts your judgement, trusts your recommendations, your knowledge. That’s priceless!

Now that you’ve gained their trust, you could in theory promote anything semi-relevant that will make you some money, but if at any point, you take advantage of that trust and promote something you know will not be helpful to them, you’ve broken that bond of trust… good luck getting it back!

Sometimes it’s hard to decide what will be really helpful to newbies. Now I use the word newbies with all the love and respect in the world. We were all newbies at some point, and we just wanted some help and guidance! I used to wrestle with figuring out what to promote and what to let slide (even if there was a good possibility I’d make some nice cash). Here is how I help myself determine if it’s worthy of my list.

If my mom was new to Internet Marketing, and she had no clue where to start, what tools would I recommend? What websites would I push for her to advertise in for the best results?

If my best friend of 10 years said “Winter, what you do is amazing! I want to work for myself online too. Please, tell me what to do!” Would I recommend the product, service, or website in question to them? If it was a must have tool, and it was worthy of her attention, would I tell her it’s extremely important to upgrade, or could she get the services she needs as a free member?

These few questions really helps me put into perspective whether or not I’d like to advertise a product or service to my list. Are they my mother, are they my best friends of 10+ years? Of course not, but anyone subscribed to my lists deserve the same respect and consideration. They did not sign up to be taken advantage of. They did not signup to be used and abused and suckered into every opportunity that looks promising. They signed up because they felt the information I provide will be helpful, useful, interesting.

Your list is valuable for many reasons. Yes you will make sales from your list, and that is A goal, but it’s not the only goal. You want to be of value, you want to be helpful, you want to be a source of information that they can trust… today, tomorrow, 2 years from now. You might have a subscriber to your list that buys a crap product right away. Then what? If they don’t get anything out of their purchase that helps them further their efforts, how many more times do you think they’re going to join a program or buy a product on your recommendation. Not many, maybe not ever again, maybe they’ll even unsubscribe!

Treat your list with respect, treat them with dignity, show them the same consideration you would a dear friend. Building that trusting relationship is far more rewarding than making that instant sale. Recommend products, services and websites that you use AND have been successful for you.

It’s all about the golden rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Marketing is a dirty job, but you don’t have to get filthy to see results. You don’t have to resort to scheming, underhanded, scammy marketing tactics to make a sale. You just need to promote from a place of honesty and integrity. The end results are priceless!

Popularity: 57%