Video Response to DC Seminar
This is a quick video of me telling you how the seminar went, and a few of my thoughts. If you want to goto the UK Event I’d love it if you used my referral link. There is a contest for the most referrals and theres a sweet $1000 prize. Now that’s not the reason why I recommend you go, but it is why I’ll be mentioning it as much as I can in case you change your mind and want to go, my referral link will be handy =P
Interview with Steve Ayling
1) How and when did your online business get started?
Hi I have been working online for about 4 and a bit years now and started with a UK only shopping site (I will get round to opening it again soon) I found exchanges when I was helping set up and add designs to exchanges as a few people asked me to help get theirs going. The first exchange I opened for myself was CarnivalClicks plus I then purchased FlyAwayHits & TrafficCircus doing them all up and selling them on for a nice profit.
I have 2 great exchanges now and have no intention of letting thses 2 go.
2) Which exchange(s) do you own or co-own?
I own TrafficAtTheRaces and TrafficDodgems
& Co-Own both RainingTraffic & ClicknPutt
3) Do you currently work exclusively online?
I worked for the last nearly 5 years as an Assistant Manager in a bowling center but I now do work exclusively online although I like to dabble in other things like buying and selling things I get offered cheaply at markets etc. I was always known as Del Boy (Only fools and horses if your from the UK you will know who I mean)
4) How many hours per day do you spend on your exchange(s)?
On average about 3 hours per day per exchange but I also run other sites including a couple of great tools for exchange users.
5) Do you do support yourself, or do you outsource support?
I do most of the support myself although I have a small team that I work with who help out on general things as needed.
6) How fluent are you with HTML, javascript, and PHP?
I can do a fair bit like cosmetic things, Do a lot of design installs for other exchanges and basic tweaking work etc. I still use some great programmers to program things but making sites look good I can do.
I can fix most of the problems I come accross and love working on LJ exchanges.
7) Approximately how many members join your exchange a month?
Just having a look now I am getting about 800 signups a month over the 2 I own, The others I am not too sure but others run those :) Numbers will increase big time now I am full time.
8) Does most of your advertising come from members referring, or you?
The majority comes from my own promotion but probably 30-40% come from members especially now Races has a cool race team feature.
9) Are you subscribed to any blogs? Which is your favorite?
I always check my feed reader and read posts in about 20 blogs :) & tim yours is one of them.
10) What would be the biggest tip you could give to readers?
The biggest tip is to avaoid the thing that gets to me the most.
So many join an exchange and then the exchange owner helps them by telling them they need a splash page so they do not use one and add about 100 credits to a general affiliate site and then leave exchanges saying they do not work.
Please please please get yourself a splash page and buy at least 2000 credits at each exchange and see what results you get.
Trust me on this one you need to give it a real good chance not a half hearted effort. I get frustraited all the time by people who expect something for nothing. You need to help yourself, I provide lots of info even a free ebook for people who are starting out.
DC Seminar Photos and Why You Should Care
Solomon, Tim, Dan, Dan, Jon
Well I’m back from the marketing seminar and my friend finally posted the photos from the event he took. Above you’ll see a group shot. We really shoulda planned a big group shot with all the TE related people, but oh well. The name of the place we were in is “crystal city”. If you click the photo above you’ll get to see all the ones he took.
So why should you care? Well I think it’s huge that so many TE people were there. And not just owners! Just the dinner alone that Jon Olson hosted had 17 people.. And many more missed out! (snooze ya loose!) That should tell you something about our industry.. These people are serious about building their business and these traffic exchange things really work!
There will be one in the UK coming up October 17th-19th. I’d definately think about getting there. I personally won’t be going to that one, but you can still learn alot just from attending. And if you are smart and have some cash budgeted in you might be able to purchase a product to help your business grow. I didn’t and so while I can still do the things I want to do, it will take me longer as I’ll be doing it without the tools to make it faster!
PS. Have you checked out StartXchange’s new surfbar? Pretty sweet if you ask me!
Jon Olson Paid For Dinner
Well Jon Olson paid for dinner last night, and there were 17 of us! Robert Purcell got a glimpse of the bill and all I can say is wow! The food was great and it was one of those Japanese places that cook right in front of you.
These marketing seminar events are great, and I definitely think you should goto one. I’ve learned quite a bit and got to meet people like Gary Ambrose. Which he talked to me a little bit about how he runs his site (the backend) and I was actually speechless. It was kinda funny because here I was with a guy with tons of experience and I could only think about what he said rather then ask a question. Oh and guess what, the very problem he mentioned it could prevent happened to me today. What’s the chances of that?
I’ll have more photos coming up, but I gotta run now. The one above was taken by my friend Jonathan Haynes.
Focus Marketing Seminars UK Event
I’m at the Focus Marketing Seminars DC Event, and there is talk about the Focus Marketing Seminars UK Event. They announced the dates for it and are having a contest to see who can blog about it and get the most sales. So if you are looking forward to going to the UK Seminar, stay subscribed and I’ll let you know more about it as I find out!
I just met Jon Olson, Paul Kinder, and Many More!
Well I’m here in Washington DC at the Focus Marketing Seminar. Meeting fellow traffic exchange owners, and other people in our industry, and people who don’t even know what a traffic exchange is, has been great. I hope to have some video footage and photos to show. So far I think it’s been great! Time to sleep now as I’ve been awake 18 hours now and I’m tired.
