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.