Jerry Reeder

I am not against surfing although for me it is a poor use of time. My time spent on an email series will generate me 100 times the same time spent on surfing.

Creating a product, writing an article, tweaking a sales letter – all of these hold a greater return on my investment. Anyone looking to build a business should find that to be the same.

This series will only ever be embraced by at most 5% of the surfers and thank goodness for that. If no one surfed there would be no credits to buy and traffic exchanges would die.

This is meant for those that really have an interest in building a business, being able to quit their job and constantly grow.

I have seen quite a few people do this but it is almost impossible to do this without the mind shift.

It usually comes in stages but…

for me it wasn’t until I saw and accepted this that I could work from home despite all the downlines and other things I had built for years before.

Now I quite truthfully never surf because at my conversion rates buying traffic is free and I can make much more working on my next product or improving my current systems than the money I would save.

Even if I could generate 500 credits an hour at a cost of $10 or less a thousand I can’t possibly justify working for $5 an hour. Even at 1000 credits an hour from surfing would you work for $10 an hour? I wouldn’t. (And I truly doubt you could do that rate.)

Mike

Two very good post on a much under represented subject. Though I partially disagree with the whole buying traffic V’s Surfing for traffic premiss, I do whole heartedly agree that you must first have a system in place that converts traffic to list members no matter what method you use to generate your credits.

Now don’t get me wrong here, If you have built your business to a point where you can afford to buy traffic credits, then by all means have at it. I enjoy a little income each month from downline members buying traffic and upgrades, but if you have not started to generate this kind of income, then an effecient surfing system and a regular surfing schedule is the way to go.

For those that are just starting out with online marketing and have traffic budgeted in to their plan of action, I recommend google pay per click, as this has converted much better in my experience over TE traffic.

I hope that I don’t get a bunch of angry emails from TE owners on that last statement(actually I would be flattered), because I have effectively used TE’s for a few years now and I still believe that they are among the best tools on the internet for newbies and guru’s alike to grow their list.

The point you made on spending your time building or tweeking your system to convert better in the traffic exchanges, is the part that I got wrong for many months when I first started out.

In my personal experience promoting anything in the TE’s other than yourself (your blog,your minisite with your products,your name,your face etc) is a total waste of time, money, and or surfing effort.

Even programs that offer branded squeeze pages with your name, picture, and autoresponder code, are subject to surf blindness, as they are being used by Hundreds or even Thousands of other members. After a short amount of time I believe that most surfers become blind to them, and I have had very little success with them.

What works for me consistantly on the TE’s is building my own personal squeeze pages, that offer a quality, viral product in exchange for a surfers name and email address. This is what I preach on my blogs and every artical I write on the subject. Unfortunatly this involves an investment of time,money and effort, not to mention the learning curve.

Most people don’t want to here the words learn,work, effort,etc, but this is what works like gang busters for me and has many hidden benifits if done right. You can still promote all of your affiliate products,downline builders, and any other product that you choose in your free offer(ebook,report,video,etc) and on your blog,Thank you page, or where ever you direct your traffic after they sign up to your list. Its the sign up that is most important to building a business.

Its much less expensive to do this today with all of the quality tools that are available, that were not around when I started out like hosting, HTML editing software, etc. Even the learning curve has been shortened considerably, as many of these free tools and services come with excellent support in the way of video tutorials.

Even though my squeeze page building skills are still in the stinky phase(they are getting better everyone I do)They still convert surfers to signups better than anything else I have promoted on the exchanges, and they are well worth the time and effort it takes to build them.

Ron