I won’t talk too much about automatic traffic exchanges or safelists that are not credit based. They are simply a waste of time. Why?

Automatic traffic exchanges – the user can let his computer surf the websites while he is watching his favorite movie. If you expect a computer to buy something from you or signup for your newsletter, no offense but … there must be something wrong with you.

Safelists that are not credit based – the users receive tons of emails, they don’t have any obligation to do anything (like opening the emails) and the most important fact is that they joined the safelists in order to send their own ads, not to read your ads, buy your stuff, or learn something.

Now let’s discuss about credit based safelists and manual traffic exchanges. They are definitely not the very best option when you want to advertise something, but they work … if you know how.

The major mistake the users of these safelists and traffic exchanges make is that they are like trying to sell a luxury car to a homeless. There is nothing wrong in selling luxury cars. Its’ not a crime to be a homeless. However, trying to sell a luxury car to a homeless is a waste of time and a naive attempt. I guess you didn’t get my point yet, did you?

Let’s focus a little bit, be honest and respond to this question: who are the users of the safelists and the traffic exchanges? The largest part of these users can be matched to one of the following categories: freebie hunters, people who cannot afford to invest in a better but paid form of advertising or people who are not willing to pay for advertising. What’s the common point for all of them? They are not typical buyers (remember this because it’s very important). For avoidance of any doubt, the same like no one is to be blamed because of driving a Toyota instead of a Rolls Royce, the same these users don’t have to be blamed because they are not typical buyers.

Now comes the problem, not theirs but yours: if they are not typical buyers but freebie hunters why don’t you take into consideration their willing and try to sell them your stuff? Are you looking for failure? If you don’t take into consideration your prospect, you cannot succeed. If it is very likely that your prospect is a type of person not willing or not affording to invest money so quickly, then offer her or him something free and you have bigger chances to succeed. I hope you won’t ask me what you get if you offer something free … But if you do it, here is my answer: give something free in exchange of subscribing to your newsletter. Then via your newsletter, keep in touch with that prospect and offer valuable information & stuff, both free and paid. Maybe they won’t buy anything tomorrow. Maybe not next week. But … maybe next month is that month when your goal will be
accomplished.

If you’re patient, you can succeed with these types of free advertising. If you try to sell something during the seconds when the prospects are visiting your website then … you have very big chances to fail. You know why? The visitor clicked on your link because she or he wants credits, not because she or he is interested in your website. Such visitors are “visiting” tens or even hundreds of pages, one after another… Don’t expect them to actually read all the pages and buy something. It’s absurd to believe this …

Conclusion: stop wasting your time or learn how to properly use the traffic exchanges and the safelists.

To Your Success,
Adrian Jock

P.S. I dedicate this article to some of my affiliates who are trying to sell my recent ebook Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads by promoting it via safelists and traffic exchanges. A lot of traffic was wasted and their result was a big fat zero, while other affiliates sent a much lower amount of traffic but still got sales. I wish I would be able to show them my website log in order to see how all their traffic bounced (visitors closing the browser’s window within seconds, without reading anything). So many resources and so much time wasted for nothing …

A thief from Singapore has ruined my day. He copied my article “Does Ezine Advertising Work?” and posted it on some ezine articles directories using his name and his resource box.

How did I find it? Due to the help of Google Alerts where I setup an alert for “ezine ads”. This service is notifying me by email the websites containing these keywords as soon as Google discovers them.

Name of the thief: Vanson Tan. The whois for the website he promotes (registered on Jan. 14, 2009) shows the real name (maybe): Tan Thong Han, Blk 330 Clementi Ave 2 #07-182, Singapore, N/A 120330, Singapore.

By now I discovered 3 places where he posted my article under his name:

• IdeaMarketers.com
• ArticlesBase.com
• GoArticles.com

Marnie Pehrson from IdeaMarketers already replied to my Copyright Infringement Notice and deleted the article from her website.

A big thank you to her. Only 30 minutes passed since I sent her the notification. I will definitely use her service for the next ezine articles I will write.

I know, I know, you may be disappointed by the fact that today’s post doesn’t contain ezine advertising tips … That’s life!

Maybe you will learn something from my experience… If you’re an ezine articles author, take care. Within the last month, the thief has posted a lot of articles under this name … GoArticles already shows that he posted 104 articles from January 26th till February 15th.

By the way, since Saturday I opened my account with Twitter. Nice tool and nice community. Today many people jumped to help me … I thank them all and I thank you too for reading this post

Now I’m gonna check where else that thief posted my ezine article (or articles?).

Before buying anything online from a seller you don’t know, do yourself a favor in order to avoid further troubles:

Contact the customer support service and ask a question.

1) There is no way to contact them before paying?

If you cannot contact the customer service BEFORE paying, are you sure that you can contact it AFTER you pay in case you need it?

2) You got no answer to your request?

If nobody cares about you and within 24 hours you don’t receive a reply to your request for help, why place the order? In order to waste your time later sending again and again your requests for help, then maybe the requests for refund?

When you contact the customer service, take care and follow these 2 tips:

1) Don’t ask a dumb question. If the answer can be easily found on the website by anyone, then you may not receive an answer. Not because the seller doesn’t provide a professional service but because she or he wants to avoid further troubles. It is well known that dumb people are trouble makers.

2) Be sure that you provide for contact an email address that works good. Not an email address where spam filters (or other blockers such as Spam Arrest) are installed. Your goal is to be contacted, right?

Let’s not waste the time. Here is the story…

One day John Doe decided that it’s time to make some good money doing nothing but … scamming people.

While walking on the streets, he told to the first person he met,

“Hey, you, I made a fortune during the last week. Don’t you want me to tell you how I did it?”

“Yeah, sure! Please do it!”

“Easy,” said John Doe, “I cannot do it for free. I invested a lot of time and resources to make this business run. By now I revealed this secret for one hundred bucks, but I like you and I won’t ask you anything but 50 bucks.”

“No way, I’m leaving” said the other.

“OK, OK, don’t go away, here is a rare bird. For you and only for you I will do it for $25.”

“Done! Here is your money and now show me the business plan.”

“Well … I just did it,” said John Doe.

“WHAT?” said the other.

“I’ve just shown you how to start your business. Do what I just did!”

* * *

Well, how was the story? Doesn’t sound this business plan quite known?

Look at all successful programs most people promote these days!

Don’t you know how to recognize such a successful program?

Easy! Visit their website and see what they sell … A book? No way. A certain product? No way. Something useful? Hmmm … No way.

Then what are they selling and you’re buying?

Well, …. NOTHING. They sell NOTHING and people are buying this NOTHING and then start their own business by selling too the same … NOTHING.

I can hear you … “That’s not true!”

Well, you’re right. You’re receiving some things such as:

1) some prewritten ads.

Advantages: you just have to copy & paste and they are original.

Disadvantage: they are poorly written but … who cares about such a minor thing, right?

2) a list of places where to advertise your business

Advantage: you don’t have to waste your time to find places where to advertise.

Disadvantage: the list is very old, you can find it on many places online and … many of the great places listed there … no longer exist. But who cares?

3) finally … a reseller link

Advantage: you don’t have to waste your time by getting a domain name, paying for hosting, copywriting and design.

Disadvantage: many of these links belong to domain names that are … BLACKLISTED, so your ad containing such links will be extremely appreciated …not by intended ezine subscribers but by their … spam folders. But … why should you care about this, right?

Well, how is this? Did you like it?

Just some food for thought …

Almost 2 weeks ago one of my subscribers spammed me.

Then a few days ago two other subscribers spammed me too.

When I received the last spam email, it seemed to me that I know that message. I checked my archive, I compared the 3 above mentioned emails and here is what I found:

- the emails were sent from 3 different Gmail accounts
- the content of the emails was almost identic
- the holders of these 3 accounts had different IP’s

Then I visited my favored forum and I found the answer to this mistery: recently more Gmail accounts were hacked and the hacker (or the hackers) spammed the people having their email addresses in the Contact List of the hacked accounts.

I read more on this topic and I found out this:

A tool that automatically steals IDs of non-encrypted sessions and breaks into Google Mail accounts has been presented at the Defcon hackers’ conference in Las Vegas.

Oops!

Basically, if you’re logged into your Gmail account and then browse a site infected, a script will harvest your username and password and then that’s it: the hacker will hack your Gmail account.

What’s the solution for this problem?

To throw away your Gmail account? NO!

Last week, Google introduced a new feature in Gmail that allows users to permanently switch on SSL. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser.

Here is how you can protect yourself:

1. Log into your Gmail email account
2. Click on “Settings” (at the top of any Gmail page)
3. Set “Browser Connection” to “Always use https”
4. Click on “Save Changes”
5. Log out
6. Log in again and you’re safe.

Now if you look at the link from the Address Bar, you will see that instead of “http” it starts with “https” which means that now your connection is SECURE.

Take care!