Traffic will save the world!

The weekend swept by us here at TrafficSynergy as we diligently tended to all our affiliates who surprised us over the weekend by spending their time away from work catering to their booming affiliate marketing endeavours. More people realise the fortune that lies in on-line advertising everyday!

The internet is bustling with unused traffic and affiliate networking helps distribute this traffic to the relevant places. The distribution of information and traffic on the internet is what keeps the internet growing and useful, without which information and services would remain localised and redundant.

In terms of the affiliates' position in the internet food-chain, they capture and re-direct traffic to useful places in exchange for risk free financial growth. The potential for an affiliate program to grow is limitless since the world wide web's traffic volume increases daily; more traffic that needs re-directing means more commission for the services affiliates provide to the internet's information flow.

As so many successful affiliates realised, affiliate marketing works, simply because it does. The internet needs it to make information useful and accessible in an attractive manner. Therefore, not just passively presenting a list of information to internet users as search results do, but fully integrating it into their web experience.

Here's to the clever people in the world who recognise a valuable resource when they see it – our affiliates.

Brand Spanking New Office - Woohoo!

"Weeks of office hunting paid off as we at TrafficSynergy finally got the opportunity to settle down in our brand spanking new locale by the gorgeous Waterfront in Cape Town.

The capacity of our previous office had been tested to the limits and all employees rejoiced as desk sharing became a thing of the past. Setting up our new office required the dedication of our entire staff force. Getting our affiliate marketing network up and running as soon as possible was our priority to ensure minimum separation from our beloved affiliates and advertisers.

After a slight hitch in implementing our broadband connection, we managed to establish an information-flow thanks to our Telkom-outperforming technical team. This victory was short lived and our spirits dampened, or rather dried, as it hit us that our water supply hadn't been connected.

Throughout the office our dedicated workers drank their coffee to keep them bright while tending to our thousands of affiliates...until we noticed the cups accumulating. Soon there wasn't a clean cup to be found. When the rumour of a plumber reached the ears of our employees the glint of excitement returned and this morning, to everyone's relief, we had water.

Now all is well at the TrafficSynergy headquarters and we shall long revel in the glamour of our new office as we continue to provide top notch service to advertisers and affiliates alike."

The Know How on Pending Sales

If you do not receive our info-emails, see it posted below:

THE KNOW HOW ON PENDING SALE AMOUNTS

So you've had a sale. Congratulations. But you're concerned because it's not registering on your home page statistics, nor do you see it when you view the statistics for the campaign that generated the sale.

This is due to the process every sale undergoes. Not all sales convert into commission as some of them get canceled and this needs to be verified by the advertiser. Therefore, ALL sales remain pending until approved by the advertiser, after, which it will be indicated on your home page statistics as well as when you request statistics for a specific campaign.

Here is how you view sales that have not been approved by the advertiser, just to give you peace of mind about the existence of the sale and to utilise your Affiliate Management System to its maximum.

1. Log into your affiliate account.



2. Go to the STATISTICS tab at the top of the page.



3. Search for the campaign's statistics you want to view.



4. As you can see in the diagram below, sales that are pending are not indicated in the sales statistics immediately. But if you view detailed statistics about the sales in the campaign, the sale is visible as pending.

2.0 MyBlogLog.com

I've got this really bad habit. I get very into whatever I'm doing. So a few hours ago I started looking into a site that many bloggers LOVE, and lucky the academy awards is on in the background, because I've just looked at the time, and it's been a good couple of hours...

Lucky I can just say I was watching the Academy Awards!

So what got my attention in such a big way. Blogging!

I've been blogging for a few years now, but it's really starting to take off both for company's and individuals.

Some bloggers use their blogs to generate traffic for their main sites and some bloggers have set up their blogs as stand alone sites.

So I wanted to find out about MyBlogLog which is very popular amongst bloggers. Basically, a lot of blogs have a bunch of pictures of other bloggers that have visited their sites often.

So for example, if you look at the latest postings of prolific bloggers Dave Duarte and Mike Stopforth you'll see down the right side of both their pages, a widget with lots of pics of their visitors.

I was curious to know whose these visitors are. Turns out if have registered with MyBlogLog, AND you are logged in to the MyBlogLog site, that whatever blog you visit that runs MyBlogLog's recent readers application will show your profile image.

But at the current time, only certain blogs are able to run the MyBlogLog widget (typepad, wordpress, blogger etc).

MyBlogLog is actually about TRACKING outbound links to see which links are most popular on blogs, BUT it appears that the images are the pulling power for MyBlogLog growing at a rapid rate. People like to see people, and so it's kewl to go to your favourite site and see who has visited recently that you know. And that means stickiness for the site.

I set up a few profiles, in my own name and in company names...

THIS IS THE INTERESTING PART..

Unlike MySpace, where more profiles lately are profiles in the name of the company or organisation, MyBlogLog mainly has INDIVIDUALS. So the company's haven't caught onto this - YET...

A few individuals have started creating their image with their company name on it - this is probably the best way of doing it, as:

...It's an individual that is moving around rather than a company, and so the person can develop relationships. It's different creating relationships when your name, profile and personality are CORPORATE.

Also, I set up a demo using a site that isn't a blog. And created the image with a Call to Action. Then I went to a couple sites with "readers images" on it - sure enough, within a few minutes, we had exposure on a couple of sites. However, if you aren't regular readers of the blogs that have the "readers images" on, you're probably wasting your time trying to get traffic this way, as very few people will click on your profile image (no matter how "call to action" it is) and even fewer will click through to your website.

BUT...

If you are a reader of lots of blogs, then EVEN if you DON'T have your own blog, go to MyBlogLog, create an account (I'd recommend a personal profile rather than a corporate profile), and then when you are reading your favourite blogs, MAKE SURE you are logged into MyBlogLog.

Also, this is the Essential Part - have your image as either a "Call to Action" OR your company logo. Very few people will click on random faces of people UNLESS they know them, but they will click on a company logo or call to action. I tried one of the names as the name of the website, but I think that is taking it a little far, as it looks a little spammish - your company image, with the name of your website NEXT to it. eg WebsiteExampleDotCom - rather just call yourself something which creates you as an individual and have your image speak for itself.

I don't think this is a HUGE traffic spinner, but if you are a big blog reader, then there it can just get you MORE traffic (and perhaps some internet friends) by being logged in when you visit the sites.

NOW LETS LOOK FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN:

I first thought that this was a fantastic idea for all blogs to have the "recent readers" pictures on - it creates stickiness.

But I quickly changed my mind, as your competitors would be spending the whole day on your site tracking who was reading your blog. So on the TrafficSynergy Blog, a lot of you are affiliates with us already, or will hopefully soon be working with us.

I'd love to see whose been reading our blog lately, but I KNOW that a couple of our friendly competitors would create camp at our Blog.

The academy awards are now over, a BIG THANK you to Jonathan Leger who has refunded me while I was writing this, (see "I feel Honoured"), and as usual I haven't packed, and I'm leaving for JHB tomorrow (luckily in the afternoon, but i'm already pretty busy, so will have to find an hour to throw some stuff in the case).

Keep those questions coming. I'll try answer as many of them as I can...

EE

I feel HONOURED...

It's been a number of YEARS since I set up TrafficSynergy.com.

It's amazing how time flies, but in that SHORT space of TIME, TrafficSynergy has become a well known affiliate network internationally, and one of the largest in South Africa (I won't say largest or best, or most well known, or throw cookies into the mix - South Africa is sooooo NEW at affiliate marketing that ALL of us should be WORKING TOGETHER to educate the South African company's rather than backstabbing!)

Anyway, RANT aside, the TrafficSynergy team have asked me to chat on the TrafficSynergy blog...

So whenever they get a new campaign - which seems to be OFTEN, I'll chat about it, tell you a little about the campaign, and maybe go a little "BEHIND the SCENES". (Perhaps call myself "journalist J")

But I don't want to write stuff you don't want to hear. I do that on my other blogs where I write what I WANT to write - here I want to write what YOU want to hear.

So if you have questions about ANYTHING related to Internet Marketing, mail me at ask AT TrafficSynergy DOT COM

And if I find interesting stuff on the web, i'll let you know...

Speaking of which, Jonathan Leger seems to be the talk of Internet Town this week. He released his $7 ebook and script, which lets anyone sell an ebook easily. I tested it out, and for some reason thought that he was giving the directory software along with the script for selling individual ebooks. He wasn't! And I think that's where the real money is.

I'm still waiting to hear whether I'm going to get refunded, as I don't need to resell his ebook - a little pyramid for my liking, as the first guys as usual will make some good cash out of it, and Jonathan will (HANG ON - IS ALREADY) making a killing out his system...

But I like Jonathan's previous software, and if you like writing, know how to set up sites, don't feel like using clickbank, and want a few kewl extra features in your sales channel (the refer a friend and the affiliate program are nice touches), then IF YOU HAVE the TRAFFIC, this could work for you...

WHAT DID I SAY????

That's right - have the traffic...

coz once again, it comes down to where are you getting your traffic from...

So we're going to go a little untraditional in this blog...

We're NOT going to chat about ONLY TrafficSynergy campaign and news and other COMPANY stuff...

WE ARE GOING TO SAY IT LIKE WE SEE IT.

I'm excited about being given the opportunity of chatting on the TrafficSynergy blog - and if the guys in the US think i'm speaking tOOOOOOO much about South Africa (I do live here after all so might be a LITTLE biased) or the South African's have no idea who Jonathan Leger is...

THEN ASK!!!

ask AT TrafficSynergy DOT com

We're going to HAVE FUN.

Cheers
Eric

It is already over half way through the week, and as usual the TrafficSynergy team is all in agreement, that with this much work, it would be better if today was Monday.

There has been quite a bit of excitement over the last week. But the best news we have received to date is from Musica. As many of you know, TrafficSynergy is notorious for "1 Day Musica Targeted Click" campaigns. This means we set the Musica campaign live for one day, and see how many targeted clicks we can get for Musica. On our last click drive, we achieved a whopping 1000 clicks on 26000 impressions in a single day. And that was on a day when most of the country was surfing through proxy's or not able to connect due to a cable breaking between South Africa and Hong Kong.

And the feedback from Musica….in terms of quality based on all their online spend including OPA registered portals, TrafficSynergy came out tops.

This week we launched *WhiteSmoke English Writing Software.

"Enable your plain sentences to become more sophisticated and professional. Using unique, patented Natural Language Processing technology, WhiteSmoke suggests context-based synonyms from its vast database and synonym dictionary. In addition, this editing software checks and corrects English grammar, spelling, and helps you write with proper punctuation. All of this, for all styles of writing - business writing, legal, medical, creative, and more."

What differentiates this campaign from all others is we are able to give our affiliates the landing page in any language they choose. This makes the *WhiteSmoke English Writing Software campaign available to traffic from anywhere in the world.

BidorBuy bought a stake in Jump for an undisclosed amount. It will be interesting to see the possible synergies between the two. Unfortunately we won’t be watching the merger between Pick 'n Pay and Fruit and Veg. The Competition Commission was not happy for this to play out.

Both topics are of interest to different people, and both will be worth following going forward. Similarly (as seen by the Musica campaign) there are many ways to market a company. Branding through the portals is one way. But there are many other ways which should be explored by advertisers to find the optimal ROI.

A research study was carried out by SecureData to measure consumers’ confidence and perceived safety while surfing online. Using 1500 consumers from the US, UK, Japan, Germany and France, consumers were questioned around their confidence and perceived safety of the internet.

Over half the interviewed consumers did not trust their Internet Security software. Despite this finding, most interviewed consumers were still actively participating in online banking, and online purchasing with their credit cards. This is not at all surprising. With online advancements making it more and more difficult for the average non-technical shopper to keep up to date, it is fast becoming acceptable to just do. It is a well known fact that hackers are working night and day to clear out our bank accounts. Yet in reality, there is not that much we are able to do, as to understand how to stop them, will consume so much of our time, we wont fit in the daily task of earning the money to place in our bank accounts.

It’s a fact of life that we protect ourselves with the product which does the best marketing campaign, and that is why affiliate marketing is such a powerful tool. Take advantage of your site visitors’ time. They give you their time in the hope you will make their visit worthwhile. Think carefully when you plan how to market a campaign. You have a lot of power as people don’t take the time to research. So sell it correctly and your visitors will buy it.

Talking about campaigns…

The latest offer for TrafficSynergy.com is focused towards our TrafficSynergy South African affiliates. It is a click campaign for Magazine subscriptions. The site also sells books, gear, clothes and other interesting extras for using on Getaway experiences. Magazines include Oprah, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, House and Leisure, Femina, Wegbreek, Getaway, Golfer, Wine, Popular Mechanics, Leisure and Wheels, and Wiel. If you have the traffic, place your banners carefully. The position you place them in could be the difference between your visitor clicking on one of these banners, or simply closing their browser and finding something more interesting to fill their minds with.

With the heat wave in Cape Town making it hard to understand the snow in London, it is possibly best to lie yourself on the beach (or alternatively sit yourself in front of the fire place) with an interesting magazine. Whether it is hot or cold, there is never a moment when one does not find value in letting ones mind wander as ones hands turn the pages through a glossy magazine.

Take advantage of this offer, it is one of those campaigns which fit nearly every affiliates’ website.

Technology is forever extending its reach. What is amazing is how it silently fits into your life without you being any the wiser. Take for example the Mate 1 Intimate Encounters - 4 field dating offer. If you sift through the 17 pages of creatives you will notice that a lot of the banners are geotargeted. This means that the banner will read the IP address of the city you are in, and place that city name on the banners.

Thus, if you are sitting in Los Angeles, this dating offer's banners will say "Meet girls in Los Angeles". And phenomenally, yet completely expected, if your IP address is Cape Town, South Africa, the banners change to "Meet girls in Cape Town".



The exponential growth of internet usage in South Africa has helped put South Africa strongly on the virtual map. With the relatively low price of labor complimented by the strong online skills of many South Africans, more and more international advertisers are seeing the advantage of including South Africa within their advertising and advertiser budget.

The Mate 1 Intimate Encounters - 4 field dating offer was previously only paying for US, UK, Australian and Canadian traffic. In the enthusiasm to include South Africa, they are now looking to test the form out with South Africans. It is all to do with quality. And since TrafficSynergy is the world’s largest link to the South African affiliate marketing world, it is all up to TrafficSynergy affiliates.

You can either pay your family and friends to complete the easy lead form, with no intention to ever participate in this online dating site. Or you can run the campaign legitimately, and help TrafficSynergy, find unincentivised single South Africans who are generally interested in meeting new people through Mate 1 Encounters. The difference between the two types of leads is often opaque, but in terms of quality and sustainability that the offer will continue, the difference is crystal clear.

Fraud on any offer is clamped down hard. And since a handful of rotten eggs can make the whole basket be thrown out, so too will a single South African affiliate destroy the undecided world opinion of South African affiliates.

Along with the launch of South Africa on Mate 1 Encounters international dating site, we have lifted the payout substantially.

Are you a PPC affiliate?
Are you running TrafficSynergy offers?
Have you ever been interested in knowing which of your adwords are actually bringing you the leads and sales?

If you answered yes to all 3 questions then read on, this post is for real.

The TrafficSynergy team has found a way to help you! TrafficSynergy has come up with a technologically, phenomenal tool for TrafficSynergy affiliates. This new TrafficSynergy tool will allow you to know exactly which of your keywords converted. Thus, if you managing a Travelstart campaign on the TrafficSynergy affiliate network, you may have 300 keywords. A simple dilema, would be to determine whether your keyword Kulula is being clicked on and resulting in a sale. The answer is now available.

The best part of this new TrafficSynergy tool, is it is 100% free. This free product is not currently available anywhere else or through any other affiliate programs. This simple, free version will benefit any affiliate. Thus, as always TrafficSynergy remains the leader in affiliate marketing. TrafficSynergy has integrated this deep level tracking into our system to benefit you. We are looking for as many affiliates as possible to take advantage of this great way to target your adwords campaigns.

Simply send us your Google Conversion Tracking code, and we will do the rest.

Also, due to the overall volume of Student Loan Consolidation leads going through our network, we have lifted the payout to a record high. To view your new payout, log into your TrafficSynergy affiliate account and click on the link on the welcome page. Remember this campaign is only for US traffic. It can be promoted through banner, email and PPC marketing.

So not many deep thoughts for today as with so much on the go, there has not been much time for us to focus our attention anywhere except on pure work.

Today while running along the promenade, I passed a tall, strong, outdoor looking, middle aged man wearing a black Virgin Active T-Shirt. He had a startling resemblance to Sir Richard Branson. I’m not sure if he is in South Africa but whether or not it was him, it made a simple run very exciting.

Often, especially in online marketing, we have so many interesting thoughts, that sometimes we forget to take advantage of the thoughts that are really smart. Although the concept I am about to tell you about, you will probably read and go, "Ofcourse you should do that!” most of you will probably never taken the time or effort to test it out. The idea is simple.

A good site, like a good shop, never gives you a reason to leave. If this mission is accomplished and they manage to keep you on their website, when should they encourage you to leave? Many sites encourage you to look around and often provide you with something you can spend your money or time on, in some way. But once you have bought, and you have exhausted the site, why do so many advertisers let you close the window and move by your own free will.

One of the most powerful pieces of real estate on a website is the thank you page... the page which says "thank you for spending time on our site, and we hope to see you again soon." This is the page you land on when you have bought the goods, or submitted your details. You, as the site visitor, are now lost where to go, as you have probably been very tightly led throughout your time on the site.

Place ads on the exit page. TrafficSynergy has tons of options for you to choose from. Your visitors have no reason to stay once they land on this page, so don’t just let them go, tell them where to go. There is a lot of money to be made on the exit, yet most websites undervalue this moment, and leave their visitors hanging.