John Dilbeck Musings

(This article is part of my Marketing Tools and Techniques: Traffic Exchanges series.)

Normally, I won’t be promoting the latest and (supposedly) greatest thing, so don’t be afraid that I’ll bombard you with untested programs that may be here today and gone tomorrow.

I prefaced this recommendation because Soaring For Traffic is a new traffic exchange, but I believe it will be around for a long time and I think it will rise to be one of the best.

I’ve known Ray for a few months and I have seen for myself that he knows quite a bit about Internet marketing and is always working to learn more and to share what he learns with others.

I first met him on the Affiliate Funnel forum, where he answered some of my questions about ad tracking on traffic exchanges. I did some searching and found that he is the owner of Private Success Team, where he is busily helping others learn how to market on the Internet more successfully.

I recently learned that he has been working for about a year to introduce Soaring For Traffic, his free traffic exchange and downline builder.

Lately, I’ve become more discerning when it comes to traffic exchanges and I’m reaching the point where I probably won’t join too many more.

Over the last year, I’ve joined and used about 75 traffic exchanges with varying amounts of success. Now, I’m a member in about 60 and actively use about 20 of them.

I am an upgraded member in about a dozen exchanges, and I just upgraded my account with Soaring For Traffic.

Although Soaring For Traffic is free, you will get more traffic with less time and effort by upgrading to one of the two upgrade levels. I chose the highest upgrade and I’m looking forward to using this exchange a lot in the coming months.

I added about 170 sites to this exchange in one fell swoop by using my Page Swirl rotator and spent another hour or two advertising it on some of my marketing pages, including my LinkScout marketing site.

After I’d finished setting everything up, it was time to surf the new exchange and see how I liked it.

I found a couple of small errors when setting up to use the exchange, but surfing the sites of other members was easy and the site responded quickly, even on my very slow dial-up connection.

The downline builder part of the site contains five money making affiliate programs and I’m a member of three of them. I didn’t count the number of traffic exchanges in the downline builder, but almost all of my favorites were there and I saw only a handful of sites I’d never tried before.

I know that Ray will be a helpful and responsive owner, and that is a big part of being an upgraded member of an exchange.

Even though Soaring For Traffic is new, it already has nearly 1,500 members and is growing quickly.

Regarding the problems I encountered, one was just an incorrect height and width attribute in the HTML code for a 100×300 sidebar button link. That was easily corrected, and I’ll let Ray know about it as soon as I publish this.

The other was a bit more of a problem, but probably has an easy solution. The site offers a way to personalize one of the splash pages that can be used on other traffic exchanges. It features your name, photo, a banner, and a testimonial.

I filled in the form and submitted it, only to be told that the banner URL was incorrect. No problem; the exchange is new. However, the real problem, for me, was that the error page did not preserve the entries on the form that were correct. As a result, a very complimentary testimonial was lost.

Ray, if you read this, I said some nice things about you that nobody will read because the form lost my heartfelt compliments.

With only a couple of minor negatives (which I’m sure Ray will fix quickly) and lots of positives, I heartily recommend Soaring For Traffic to you.

If you want to be a free member, this exchange is better than most.

If you plan to upgrade, the prices are right and the One-Time-Offer page offers good discount pricing for an annual or lifetime membership.

If that doesn’t fit your budget, the second One-Time-Offer (OTO) page offers a 33% discount on the highest upgrade level, making it a good buy. Normally, the highest level, Soaring Eagle, costs $14.95 per month, and I think that is over-priced for a 1:1 surf ratio and anything less than 1,000 credits per month. However, the second OTO page offers the Soaring Eagle level for $9.99, and I think that is the proper price for what is offered.

I don’t know if either of these discount pages will be available should you join, nor what they may offer at that time. These things are always subject to change.

If you don’t take advantage of either OTO page, you’ll pay more, perhaps a lot more, in the long run.

Soaring For Traffic will be one of the dozen or so traffic exchanges I’ll use on a regular basis.

You can join Soaring For Traffic for free and see for yourself how well it works for you.

Act on your dream!

JD

Every month, TuneFlow challenges artists around the world to write and record new, original songs based on one of four new titles we’ve chosen.

You review and rate the songs. The songs with the best average ratings at the end of the month win. It’s “battle of the bands” Internet style!

(Come see my Tuneflow lens on Squidoo. It’s pretty basic now, but I’ll add more over time.)

What is TuneFlow?

TuneFlow’s Mission:

1. To change the rules, to put the ARTIST FIRST.

2. Provide a fun place to discover new music and new artists.

Top 5 Reasons For Artists To Join TuneFlow:

• Get a FREE Website to promote your band and music!
• Sell your music on TuneFlow FREE (with no restrictive contracts)!
• Compete in the FREE TuneFlow Tournament each month and expose your music to hundreds of new fans, get FREE reviews, and receive major recognition!
• Get FREE global airplay for your music on TuneFlow Radio!
• Advertise your live gigs…FREE!

Over 1,600 songs and 600 artists, with more joining every month.

Members:

Rate songs and earn free MP3 downloads.

Browse songs in the following categories:

• Alternative
• Blues
• Country
• Dance/Techno
• Folk
• Hip Hop/Rap
• Humor
• Jazz
• Metal
• Pop
• R&B/Soul
• Rock
• Spiritual
• World

And, when you find songs you like, you can purchase and download them.

New artists and songs are being added all the time; come see what’s new today!

Brad Fallon, CEO, has recently introduced Free IQ, an interesting new website that brings content providers, purchasers, and affiliates together.

Free IQ looks to me like it combines some of the features of several sites that are doing well: Squidoo, Lulu, CafePress, and a few others.

Like Squidoo, Free IQ asserts that most people are an expert in something, and then provides a platform for you to express your expertise.

Lulu.com offers a place to sell your ebooks and also offers extra features for print on demand real books as well as help in marketing your real bound books in bookstores and online retailers.

CafePress provides services for selling your CDs and printed ebooks.

Free IQ offers some of these services, but in a totally different way. They do not offer print on demand services. They don’t offer an unlimited number of one-page lenses as Squidoo does, but they do offer multiple categories on your publisher’s page.

Here’s a brief introduction from the Free IQ “Learn More” page:

We believe everyone knows something that’s valuable to someone else.

And some people know things that are very valuable to many other people.

So who decides whose ideas are more valuable?

The answer, of course, is everyone! We all do. This is the “Marketplace for Ideas,” where the best knowledge, ideas and information rise to the top. At Free IQ, the best content appears at the top of every search, based on actual reviews.

In a nutshell, we base our search result rankings on the feedback and reviews by people all around the world. (In fact, Free IQ has more than one patent pending based on the way in which the very best ideas rise to the top of our search results.)

Do you have knowledge and ideas to share?

Are those ideas presentable in a video or audio format? How about an e-book or an article?

Whatever your choice of media (video, audio, or print), Free IQ is the place to offer (present?) your knowledge to the world. And we’ll host your materials and stream them - for free!

This is why, when you want to learn more about almost anything, Free IQ is the ideal place to learn from the world’s best experts - for free.

We believe that internet video offers the best way to learn what you want, when you want - and the best thing is, it’s Free!

Go ahead and try it. Search for any topic you’re interested in learning more about - from business management to marketing to software to your favorite hobby - and see all the experts and authors and speakers on that subject.

Our patent pending search algorithm causes the best information to appear at the top, based on the reviews of the free information by other people interested in that same topic. In fact, other Free IQ users all over the world screen all the available information for you, so when you want to know something, the best video and audio presentations come out on top.

Now that’s a Marketplace for Ideas!

You can read more on their site by clicking the “Learn More” link at the top of the page.

If you have information you want to share with others, you can upload your ebook, video, teleseminar, audio, or other presentation to Free IQ and make it instantly available to others.

Now, I’m brand new to this site, but I already see a problem developing.

Many people have uploaded some of the free ebooks that Ken Evoy wrote. Yes, as affiliates, they have the right to upload copies of Make Your Site Sell! or the Affiliate Masters Course.

However, this will clog the system with duplicate content, the only difference being whose affiliate links are branded in the copy that’s being distributed.

Free IQ claims that their review system will bring the best content to the top of the page, so why do we see the exact same ebooks spread throughout the page? I’m not saying the best content won’t bubble to the top over time, I just see this as one way the system will be clogged with duplicate content.

I think it would be better for a Five Pillar affiliate to write a report of his/her own and recommend good resources for people who want to become an affiliate master or sell from their sites. Then, it would be easy to reference the resources you recommend and still provide unique content that you can show on your publisher’s page.

Now, that’s how I intend to test this site. To that end, I’ve created my publisher’s page for John Dilbeck.

Currently, there is not much on the page, but I’ll be adding some articles or small ebooks as I have time to develop them. Free IQ looks to be an excellent way to market and provide your content on a site that is relatively easy to use.

Not only that, but it will help you build your mailing list. If you have an Aweber account, you can plug your mailing list in directly. If not, you can choose to have leads emailed to you.

Back to finding info on Free IQ. Just go to the Free IQ home page and either enter a search term or click one of the tags.

You will be taken to a page that has free content in the left column and paid content in the right column. In other words, you can read, view, or listen to (as appropriate) the information in the left column for free. You can purchase, should you decide to do so, the information in the right column.

If you want to review an item, give your opinion, or leave feedback, all you have to do is Join for free and create your account.

Content Providers

If you are an expert on almost any topic, Free IQ may be a good place to display your expertise and pass along your best ideas.

At the moment, while Free IQ is still in beta, there is no limit on the size of the files you upload. They will stream or let others download your products for no cost to you. If you are providing content for sale, there is no monthly fee to use the Free IQ shopping engine to sell your information products. When you make a sale, Free IQ will charge you 5% of the sales price, plus credit card processing fees. You don’t even have to have a merchant account.

Once you’ve created your free account (see above), you can upload your content and see how well the system works for you.

Currently, I’m not sure if each content provider has to take part in the affiliate program, or not.

Affiliate Program

One of the things that attracted me immediately to Free IQ is their two tier affiliate program.

If you join the Free IQ affiliate program, you will get paid for the purchases made by anyone you refer, not just once, but for an entire year! Of course, many of the people you refer will buy nothing or maybe one item. However, if he or she does buy multiple items, you’ll get paid for each of them for an entire year.

You also get paid a percentage of any content sold by any Content Providers you refer.

While not as good as having a lifetime customer, getting paid for a year of purchases beats getting paid (maybe) for a single purchase.

If you are interested, you should read the affiliate program page to learn more about some of the innovative things Free IQ is doing.

You are invited to join their affiliate program and see for yourself how it works for you.

It’s free to join and you can quit at any time if you find it doesn’t work for you.

Again, to recap, this site is still in beta and there is no way to tell if it will gain market share or not. It looks interesting to me and that’s why I’m passing it along to you.