TrafficSwarm is the only traffic exchange program that I’ve looked at so far, and while I won’t judge the entire class of web sites by one specimen, I have to say that at this point, I’m not the least bit impressed.

The idea behind a “traffic exchange” is simply what it sounds like. You send traffic to somebody else’s web site, and they send traffic to yours. If you don’t have any traffic or any money to generate it, it’s simple. You just click on other people’s web sites, stay on the page for at least twenty seconds, and earn points for surfing. These accumulated points buy you a slot in the system. In other words, somebody else who’s clicking for points will land on your page. Each time this happens, points are deducted from your account. I suppose that occasionally, people might actually buy something from you this way, but your effort is better spent doing something else.

Here’s what I noticed during the time I spent looking at TrafficSwarm. First of all, most of the web sites in there are complete garbage. It’s get-rich-quick schemes promising you that they have a guaranteed system for making millions of dollars on the internet. One site I ran across claimed that it “literally forces money out of the internet into your pocket.” Frankly, I’m not happy being advertised alongside this crap. It diminishes my credibility. It creates the impression in the surfer’s mind that what I’m offering is just another scam like these other sites next to me.

The other thing I noticed was that while their system kept me from clicking until their 20-second timer expired, there wasn’t anything they could do to make sure I was actually staying on the web page and reading it. When I was more optimistic about giving this system a go, I had started reading some other web pages, and I’d keep a TrafficSwarm tab open that I’d go back to every now and then to click on another page. I rarely ever looked at any of them. Some of the site owners had thought one move ahead on this one and had loud, obnoxious audio playing in the background of some guy starting off a long-winded sales pitch with, “Are you ready to be the next internet millionaire?” Fortunately, though, my computer has a mute button on it.

Finally, of the sites that I did look at, I didn’t buy one solitary thing or opt-in on one single e-mail list. So, from where I was sitting, the conversion rate was lousy. Probably had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t targeted at all. That’s another reason why I think TrafficSwarm is a waste of time. They’re just another site that’s trying to be all things to all people. At any rate, don’t take my word for it. Check out TrafficSwarm for a week and you’ll see what I mean.

If you’re wondering how to write a blog, The Frugal Marketer is a great example. I read the first couple of entries, promising myself that I wasn’t going to spend too much time on this. But the writing was really good and the information was presented well. I hadn’t heard this stuff before, and before I knew it, I was reading a long article in its entirety (it takes a lot to get me t0 do that these days).

If you’re getting ready to spend a significant amount of money on advertising, or if you’re in the process of putting together a marketing plan with a limited budget, take a look at this blog first. You might get some good information about something you hadn’t thought of.

http://wellthylifestyle.wordpress.com/

After about a week of looking into this more extensively, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Renegade system is a GOLD MINE. Much more so than I’d thought before. Why?

Because of all the people out there doing network marketing, 99% of them are still doing it the old, stupid way. As a result, network marketing still has a strong negative stigma. Lots of people are completely turned off by the idea, fully convinced that they’ll never even think about doing network marketing. For a lot of THOSE people, it’s because they tried it before and found it what it’s really like.

That’s great news.

Since network marketing still suffers from a negative stereotype, people will be skeptical of anything they hear about it. Nobody wants to hear about “proven systems,” automated marketing machines, or anything that’s guaranteed to produce thousands of dollars in a short time. That’s even better news. Because most of the “Internetwork Marketers” out there are doing a lousy job promoting their stuff. They just have more of the same crap you hear from the old-school network marketers! Make zillions of dollars, no work, no selling, no calling your friends and family, blah blah blah. This isn’t MLM, this isn’t sales, this isn’t a scam, this isn’t a pyramid scheme, but NO MENTION of what it actually IS!

So, in other words, of all the people doing network marketing, few of them are actually positioned as solutions providers. Few of them give away any valuable information, and most of them sound exactly the same.

For somebody like Yours Truly, that’s FANTASTIC news. Stay tuned!

I just identified, over the past few weeks, a fatal flaw with my marketing plan.  I haven’t been living my story as The Introverted Entrepreneur.  Ever since I started creating this brand name, I’ve been keeping myself busy going to lots of networking meetings, introducing myself cold to strangers, calling people on the telephone, and even leading new groups.  All the things that, in other words, introverts hate doing.

This is a serious mistake because I’ve run the risk of intimidating people to my approach.  It is imperative that I be successful in a way that any introvert can duplicate.  Success by itself, in other words, isn’t enough.

But it finally dawned on me after about the 20th person made the same comment, that my approach just wasn’t working.  The comment was – “But Dave, you’re not an introvert.”  In other words, I had alienated my audience by creating the impression that I couldn’t relate to them or understand them – because I wasn’t one of them!

But, there’s still time to correct the mistake.  From now on, when I walk into rooms filled with strangers, I will attract them to come talk to me.  If it’s awkward and uncomfortable, I’ll stand in the corner and talk to no one.  After all, I won’t be any worse off than if I just hadn’t gone!

How consistently do you stick to your story?  What do you tell the world that you stand for?  Do your day-to-day actions reflect this?

Here’s an angle on sales and marketing that occurred to me this past week. Thinking back to my days in electronics school in the late nineties, I remember the black art of tuning an AM/FM radio so that the station that comes in matches the dial. (As I recall, I never did get that quite right).

Anyhow, I’ve always thought of prospecting as a screening-out process. I thought that you prospected by asking certain questions of “suspects” to find out if they were good leads or not. But, it didn’t occur to me that the prospecting process might affect the person’s viewpoint and their interest. That led to another train of thought.

Ever since I left the corporate world (where I got paid good money to waste time), I have come to realize that time is valuable. In the sales and marketing world, I think that a lot of struggling sales reps are struggling because they waste their time on the wrong people.

So, what does this have to do with a radio receiver? The antenna on a radio is being bombarded with every radio frequency in the air. But, the dial is only tuned to one station. How does it pick the right station, and play only what’s on that one? There’s a little gadget called an RF amplifier. Let’s say, for example, that you have your radio tuned to 90.7 FM. All of those signals are fed into the RF amplifier at the same time. It takes any signals that are close to 90.7 FM and boosts their strength. Any other signals are attenuated, or weakened.

So, I thought, what if the sales prospecting process worked this way too? What if your tagline, your 30-second commercial, or your web site stimulated the interest of a good prospect, while causing a bad prospect to LOSE interest?

You’d get more done in less time, I’ll wager.