Traffic delivery

[esuccess]

Since a little while, traffic delivery has gone way down. I am just clicking to rake up tons of credits.

What's up? What has changed? Credit management and delivery used to be one of the strongest points of SX

Caroline

[revjoybunny]

I have found traffic goes up and down naturally because of holidays perhaps and other things.

I found that not many of my team for instance surfed over easter. I suspect this isnt the full answer but Im sure its a contributing factor

[lgglobal]

I agree, traffic delivery is way down on "The old SX"

Today for example.

over 80 active surfers( approx)

28 hits deliverd in 6 hours out of 300 assigned.

Thats less than 10% of hits in 25% of the day

Give us an update on why delivery has slowed please Tim

[esuccess]

I have found traffic goes up and down naturally because of holidays perhaps and other things.

I found that not many of my team for instance surfed over easter. I suspect this isnt the full answer but Im sure its a contributing factor

If that were the cause, Rev Joy, then why do the other traffic exchanges deliver traffic quickly?

[yvonne12]

Totally agreed Caroline. The same happens to me.

Ok, I know that I am one of the "heavy surfers" in SX, but I assign more credits to be delivered a day then what I surf. I do this so that my credits should be reduced. But lately it is not going down it is going up.

Here is a suggestion for you Tim:

Why not take down your ad pages about SX ? Pages like Terms of Use etc. Maybe that will get the ration of hits delivered up again?


Monica

[jeweledbluerose23]

Personally, call me weird, but I am greatful for the slight slow-down in traffic delivery. I know we all work hard to get the traffic we want delivered, but it's also nice to take a slight breather from the weeks and months required to keep the credits coming in to keep our sites rotating.

Even with reducing the number of traffic exchanges that I surf in a day, it still can become a royal pain in the back side to keep credits within all of them, plus keep my sites updated. Considering that since I can't afford upgrades in any of the exchanges I surf, I must remain a free member in them and it can create loads of work just to get traffic.

Not complaining about having to work, I welcome the work in most cases since I am here at home all the time, and most of that time is spent alone, but just saying it's nice to have more than just a few hours of personal time, that I can focus on something else and give my eyes, hands, and mental state (lol) a break.

[esuccess]

There is nothing weird about wanting to have a breather.
But you can get that easily, by adjusting the Rate on the sites.

Another thing I did, surfing fewer exchanges. Because in my case, spreading myself so thin was not helping, except to wear myself out.

Happy surfing!
Caroline

[jeweledbluerose23]

Have done that here on SX, but so far SX is the only traffic exchange that I surf and know of that allows the members to set their own rate of delivery.

Some delivery rates can be so fast in some exchanges that unless the member is a heavy surfer, it can be hard to keep up with, even with the auto assign shut off (if that option is available). For example: Traffic Bunnies, I like this exchange to (it's fun in it's own little way), but it seems I just put credits on my sites and poof they are gone. This can be viewed as a good thing, but I also like having a small build up of credits on my sites so that way I can have a reserve of credits my sites can rotate on, in cases where I might be gone on vacation (wishful thinking) or am too sick to get online for awhile.

So in some cases I welcome the slow-downs, as long as they don't happen to often, and from what I gather this don't happen often here in SX, so in part, I am guessing that I am just having a time seeing why this can be viewed as a problem with SX. No ill intentions here, just not understanding fully.

[xxclixxx]

Thanks for the feedback. The problem is the high surfing bonuses, everyone is earning more traffic than before =P

[revjoybunny]

At the risk of being shouted down maybe they need to come down a bit Tim
(the surfing bonuses)

[yvonne12]

Yes, that is one option.

1) Take down the surfing bonuses a bit. If everyone has more then enough credits they they wont mind if that surfing bonus is taken down for a while to get the traffic delivery back up.

2) By removing the splash pages with ads etc. from SX, it would give room for more of the members websites as well, hence higher delivery.


Just as an example. I have set up 5 campaigns and has the rate set at a total of 3000 a day. The day today is now 10 hours old (server time) and I have had 700 views of those 5 URL's. And that is not good. There is only 14 hours left to deliver the other 2300 credits I have assigned today. Ok I know that it says that this rate is not guaranteed because it will all depend on how many are surfing that day and how much they are surfing. But by doing just these 2 adjustments it would take up the traffic delivery a lot.

As Caroline said earlier, if some members want to take a breath and not have so many hits delivered they can adjust this with the rate option. I believe that this is the reason why that option is available to the members.


Best Regards
Monica

[xxclixxx]

I only have one URL in rotation set to 1000 a day. This is to track delivery rate. I think you might be seeing other people advertising the StartXchange splash page. I'm going to check now, I saw 2 doing it earlier today and will check others.

[yvonne12]

Ok Tim,

The splash pages I am talking about is the "terms of Use" and a splashpage with promotion of the fast surfbar we have here in SX.

Also if you stop this Random Prize page orset it not to appear that often, it will first of all give room for more hits of the members page but with less Random Prizes (since we all have to much credits) that too will give room for more hits to the members pages.


Best Regards
Monica

[nsant46]

Hi,

You are technical and I not, so I will accept all your decision.

Noemi

[esuccess]

I second the suggestion to take bonuses down.
In my humble opinion, bonuses are worth BEEP
if they do not contribute to traffic delivery but rather bring it down.

Caroline

[yvonne12]

I second the suggestion to take bonuses down.
In my humble opinion, bonuses are worth BEEP
if they do not contribute to traffic delivery but rather bring it down.

Caroline

Very true Caroline. I think members want traffic more then bonuses and random prizes.

Best Regards
Monica

[arthouse]

Hey Everyone,
Wow, I see lots of you really have your thinking cap on, that's great.
Traffic delivery is one of my highest concerns at any exchange.
I don't really understand most of the behind the scene tech stuff, ex. what order sites get put into rotation, which site get priority over others etc..., but I don't need to know all that.
My story is a little different, I've received over 843,000, and I have less than 10,000 credits unused. So, I can't seem to surf as fast as my traffic is being delivered. I'm not complaining, but please let me know if I might be hogging too much traffic. I sure don't want my campaigns to cause others to receive poor traffic.
Monica is right about the"terms of use" page being in rotation, but if a member is doing it and Not Tim, well that's their choice.

[revjoybunny]

well the bonus is just that a bonus

if we are not getting the traffic then we arent getting signups so what use is the credits sitting there doing nothing (I dont have spare credits by the way but am still happy to see the bonus drop) if it helps the exchange and tim did say a while back they would fluctuate I know it wont be popular with some but those who value the exchange and have been around a long time will surely understand, besides what goes up comes down and vis versa

[xxclixxx]

if you could report this terms of use page coming up that'd be great.. I can't track it down =P

[yvonne12]

if you could report this terms of use page coming up that'd be great.. I can't track it down =P

First of all thank you Tim for this fast reaction. I think this step will help us to see faster traffic delivery for those that dont have that (Not Randy) :D

I will take down this Term of Use page next time I see it and report it back to you :cool:


Thank you very much again Tim

Best Regards
Monica

[esuccess]

Oh Randy, you are the culprit!
You have made your pages so attractive that Tim's program is
automatically sending the traffic to yours before all others LOL

Tim, please do not see this as a request to take down his pages.
Just kidding my team mate a bit :)

Caroline

[suryan]

Tim, I see that you adjusted the surfing bonuses to keep down the excess credit buildup so our sites will get delivered. Thank you. One thing I should point out though is the numbers are reversed on the page that describes the various bonuses.

It says 175/150+ Surfing Bonus5/10%

But it should say 150/175+ Surfing Bonus5/10% ;)

That's a quick fix so no problem, but since you just announced it in the newsletter and many members will pull up that page I'm sure you want to correct it before too many members see it.

[mollyirving]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the quick response.

I agree I don't like seeing the SX pages in rotation when I surf SX.

On another note, Your little girl sure is cute! You must be a proud daddy now.

[msbeejay]

I would not want to be a traffic exchange webmaster...
Whew, taking care of the scripting is never ending and
can become a rather thankless conquest when trying
to keep members happy...It is not alway cut and dry
a lot of things factor into it...the number of surfers,
the rate members set for each of their sites, surfing
ratios, surfing bonuses, points, etc. ..well I think you
all get the picture...

Sure we all want smooth, trouble free and fast surfing...

Just try and imagine what it would be like if ALL the members
surfed on a daily basis instead of the small fraction who do!?

[xxclixxx]

LOL thanks BJ. It would be awesome if all members surfed! More stress for me but it excites me seeing the number surfing go up. I've also learned a TON about optimizing the site for the traffic it's delivering. There reaches a point when getting a bigger server isn't the answer =P

[nsant46]

If it's useful for everyone it's well.
Noemi

[silverguru]

Thanks for the feedback. The problem is the high surfing bonuses, everyone is earning more traffic than before =P

Sorry but I really can not see how that is the problem..:confused:

[dehawkinz]

As a general rule - you want (as a TE owner) the credits earned = credits used, if you increase the amount of credits being earned due to ratios, bonuses, prize pages etc, such that more credits are being earned than used, members get to a point where the 'need' to surf is neglible as they have enough reserve credits to fund their campaigns which results in less surfing, and hence less credits being used, which causes a spiral effect of decreasing surfing.

This is the main reason why very few exchanges offer a 1:1 surf ratio for free members - it usually kills the delivery if they add extra credits into the system.

Therefore, in order to keep the ability to deliver 1000 hits a day to a url, Tim needs to ensure the credit delivery is kept under control, which means either:
reducing surf ratios
reducing prizes
since at the moment a free member in a small team on level 10 surfing when 150 members are surfing could receive easily a 2:1 ratio, ie every 2 pages surfed earns 1 credit, and a platinum member is probaly getting a 3:4 ratio, every 3 pages surfed earns 4 credits; you can see how excess credits can soon build up for members.

Reducing prize values would have a minimal impact in comparisson to surf ratios as more people surfing have a bigger impact than prizes which have already been trimmed anyway :)

DeHawkinz

[suryan]

As a general rule - you want (as a TE owner) the credits earned = credits used, if you increase the amount of credits being earned due to ratios, bonuses, prize pages etc, such that more credits are being earned than used, members get to a point where the 'need' to surf is neglible as they have enough reserve credits to fund their campaigns which results in less surfing, and hence less credits being used, which causes a spiral effect of decreasing surfing.


DeHawkinz

Hard for me to fathom that anyone would stop surfing because they have enough credits for their campaigns (meaning more than enough since "enough" would just move that campaign for the short term). You can never have too many credits. Use some to reward your downline for their surfing. Use them to motivate your downline members who are not surfing (or surfing very little). In other words, if YOU have more than you need, spread it around. Then keep surfing so you can manage your campaigns and spread more around.

Second point that is purely psychological, people tend to surf more when they get more for it. Why spend hours surfing for 100 credits when you could spend the same amount of time and earn nearly double. I can tell you that's the way I work. The only time I surf ILH is during their Henry Hours. Since I surf in tabs I put the exchanges I'm doubling up on in the middle and surf out (e.g., for 6 tabs I would surf 3-4-5-6 then 4-3-2-1, doubling up on the exchanges in positions 3 and 4 (or to put it another way, 1, 2, 5, and 6 only get attention every other pass). The exchanges with the greatest current return get the prized middle spots. I think you can guess that as soon as the number surfing jumps into the higher bonus range I slide SX to the middle - and when it drops down I move it to the outside. Why settle for less when you can get more for the same effort.

So give me tons of credits and I'll find something to do with them, or help someone who doesn't have time to surf as much as they would like. Then I'll surf some more.

Oh, I almost forgot. The other nice thing about being able to get tons of credits is when you know you have a big launch coming up and you want to make sure you have enough credits to do it justice come launch day. Or if you know you have a vacation coming up and need to hold back some credits to assign right before you leave. The "bank" option here is great for that - and doesn't have a negative impact on inventory because those credits are not assigned to anything yet. Members only get testy when they have several thousand credits assigned to what they plan to be a 3 day push of 2K/day and after the first day only 20 views have been delivered (yes, that happened to me in one of the "pro only" exchanges).

[dehawkinz]

Unfortunately Su, not everyone views it as you do - a lot of people view free credits as a replacement to surfed credits ie 100 free credits = 100 credits they don't have to surf for. You yourself noticed that with the higher bonuses traffic delivery went down over the longer term, and this is why - people are getting less need to surf to achieve the same result.
You might say I want to surf 1 hour on Traffic Exchanges, and will give priority to those that have the best ratio;
Others might say I want to earn 50 credits each on my Traffic Exchanges, and once they reach their target stop.
I am not saying either approach is better than the other, they are just different ways of viewing traffic exchanges, and goal setting.

I surf 4 - 6 sites in a tabbed browser and give priority to some exchanges, but my system is different to yours.

Maybe a solution would be to release bonus credits in pre-detirmined chunks - eg at 20 pages, 50 pages, 100 pages, 150 pages, 200 pages, etc so members might be incentivised to surf on to the next bonus release - the AMCS scripts do a variation on this where surf bonus levels rise at pre set intervals, and a bonus will carry over to the following day: so for example if you do 50 pages, the following day you get an extra 10% on your surf ratio, and your current ratio increases by 5%. (the maximum is capped at 150% I believe)

No, there is no easy "one size fits all" solution, because everyone is different, and everyones motivations and aims differ - as a TE owner the best you can hope for is a 'majority fit ' solution.

DeHawkinz

[xxclixxx]

Many people will stop surfing if the number of hits delivered is less than the number of hits they earn each day (once it hits a certain point). There is a certain balance in the middle where everyone seems to be happy, which is where I try to keep it. I wish everyone thought the same way, it'd make it alot easier! LOL but I guess that's part of the fun =P