Randy gave me an idea of the music he wanted but this was the closest cc I could find. If you would like to find your own www.jamendo.com is a good place to start.

This is my first attempt. I felt it was too long and I’m sorry Randy, I just don’t like that style of music.

So I decided to try another. This one is shorter, just over 30 seconds, so images move faster, and the music is more “traffic like”, at least to me!

And this is the final, a little longer than the second and my favourite.

Of course Randy can choose for himself which is best. Click here to download all files.

Lessons Learned

As a novice I expect to make a few mistakes.  If you decide to have a go at this and want to a video put together make sure the images you send are no smaller than 640 x 480 but 1024 x 768 would be much better.

How to take screenshots and videos?

If you are not sure how to take screenshots or do not have any suitable software you may find Jing useful.  It’s free and from the same people who make Snagit and Camtasia. Jing can be downloaded from www.jingproject.com.  The video’s Jing creates are crisp and in small files but if you want to play them on your PC/Mac you will need to grab a swiff player, www.globfx.com of a good player also free of charge.  You could convert them, most converters cost a few dollars, but there a few free too.

Whats all this about a FREE promo video then?

Well if you have not been lucky enough to enjoy one my newsletters then now is the time to join!  Go to www.ventrino.com and click the subscribe button (I know I know, I should have it here in the blog…. I’ll sort it when I get less time).

In the last newsletter I promised to do a couple of free promo videos (see http://bit.ly/a7BLjX for the original post), here’s the email if you are interested:

Run the following code in your SQL viewer or phpmyadmin, whatever you prefer, but replace your-clickbank-id-here with your ClickBank ID.

UPDATE links
SET link = 
REPLACE(
  link,
  'ratemyop',
  'your-clickbank-id-here'
)

Don’t change anything else, make sure you do not disturb the ‘ otherwise it won’t work.

The code will replace all of the “ratemyop” entriies with your ID instead.

If you want to build a list fast there is no better way than with a Ventrino Script and now you can for a fraction of the normal price.

Use promotional code LTESPECIAL for a 40% discount – available to the end of March.

Update Feb 22

A slow version as requested by a few people. I have not made up my mind defo on this yet but I think I still prefer the fast one :) I am working on one with impact statements right now, thanks to Jose and Ron, The Godfather….

Update Feb 23
First files for the free video came from Randy Fountain of www.trafficspeedway.com and I have been having great fun looking for music to suit his chosen genre. Would be vice for someone to ask for Punk, Heavy Metal or even some decent Viking War music, not sure if Sabaton have any Creative Commons releases but that would certainly cause the kids to complain!

The Top Ten Marketing Rules for TE Owners

Traffic exchange owners are far from secretive, the more exposure they can get for themselves and their members the better.  But did you know how many of them collaborate to improve their sales?  With a recent flurry in the number of sales a distributor confessed that he had found an exciting way to make more money with the same amount of effort he put into his own exchange and after some discussion we decided between us these are the top ten marketing rules required to make your TE a success:

1. Other Traffic Exchanges.  Not surprising but you will find other traffic exchanges a good place to find the kind of people interested in traffic exchanges.
2. Virtual pages.  The ability to create a short sharp shock to attract attention has existed in the Ventrino/Walkersoftware traffic exchange script since the late 90’s.  In recent years this innovation has been renamed to Splash and Squeeze pages.  These are invaluable tools for picking up members and smart Internet developers have created entire businesses focused on providing cool designs.  Use your favourite search engine to locate them.
3. Forum signatures. This is an ‘old school’ solution yet effective more than ever.  Make sure you use them on every forum and blog post you comment on.  Needless to say you must avoid spam, your signature should be a natural extension to the valuable information you provide.
4. Your home page is your storefront.  Make sure it looks professional and delivers the message your customers want to see and hear rather than what you want to tell them.
5. Don’t be all things to all people.  Focus on your customer persona and give them your message in the language they understand.  Try to offer only the features your customers want.  Each feature your customer does not understand may leave them confused and less likely to join you.  Find a unique term that describes your story.  My first was “Unlimited FREE traffic” which in pre Google days kept me at the top of search engines.  Finding something not dominated by someone else already is difficult, but get it right and this one action will create your own world wide rave and place you ahead of your competitors.  Invest in keyword analysers, and time spent surfing Google Trends is never wasted.
6. Email marketing is seriously misunderstood by far too many people and most of the advice you will receive is plain wrong.  You have to understand how well this medium works for your market.  Some people extol the virtues of services such as aweber and icontact, but abuse these services and you are no better than sending spam.  Your traffic exchange script software already includes opt-in managed mail and provides evidence of your members signup date and location should they forget and decide to report you.  It also includes easy web-based database removal, another feature people will trust.  Never use any list unless you created it and the recipients expect to receive mail from you.



7. Autoresponders are not what they used to be, but they still have a place in marketing.  Have at sometime signed up to an auto responder… and never opened one of the messages sent?  You joined because you were interested and did not want to lose that link.  It may take a while but you may eventually open one of the messages and take action but there is no replacement for having a good reason to buy.
8. JV’s are discussed at length on all marketing forums because they make sense.  Find other companies that sell related products and services and form a joint venture with them.  Special promotions to your members of their products reciprocated with yours to theirs provides three benefits.  You make money, they make money and your combined customers benefit from both products and services, perhaps even at a cost saving too.
9. Communicate regularly.  One of our script owners sends no less than 5 messages per week and has over 60,000 members.  Does that not speak volumes?  He also takes regular webinars, posts podcasts, youtube videos and twice a year holds seminars.  He sees a TE as the launchpad to the products he promotes but says he regularly makes $10,000 over a weekend by selling discounted solo mail, traffic and banner impressions.  You might think a man like this is busy, but he always has time to talk to his customers and provides a toll free number for his US clients with “call me anytime” below his smiling photo.
10. … and lastly the surprise:  Guarantee your service.  How many exchanges offer a results based guarantee?  This one feature has increased sales ten times for one exchange owner.  “Its remarkable, I decided to test an idea I read in a free ebook on marketing, the theory is you will have to refund a proportion of the money, you cannot satisfy everyone, but the additional sales made due to the guarantee far outweigh the loss made in refunds”. See footnote.

So there it is, the secret society of successful traffic exchange script owners top ten tips for driving profit into your exchange.

If you host asks you to set the DNS to a couple of entries that look like the following then it is likely this article will help:-

ns5.ventrino.com
ns6.ventrino.com

Who is your name registrar?

First identify your name registrar.  Popular ones include namecheap.com and  godaddy.com.  If you don’t recognise these names use a whois tool to find out.  www.domaintools.com and www.coolwhois.com are simple to use, they offer an input for the domain name, press the button and a few seconds later you can read about your domain and listed somewhere you will find your name registrar.

Got your name registrar – what’s next?

As name regsitrars will use their own method for setting the DNS you will have to check their FAQ for more specfic instructions. Most are simple and within a few clicks the job will be done.

Changed my DNS but still goes to old server, why’s that?

Patience! Officially it can take up to 72 hours for servers across the net to update entries. Typically 15 minutes but this will be in perfect conditions. Your PC will cache a routing table as well, so while the Internet may have updated your PC can still send you to the wrong place (sometimes a restart can clear this).

Ventrino owners are now beta testing a method for their members to improve their exposure and promotion efforts with a few clicks from within their tools page.  Following is a short video demonstration:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbKbczz6e4c

Dave is a drop out science student who began life in Kingston University in Surrey, UK.  He got halfway through and decided there was more science to be learned in a kitchen and his love of music and art were far more compelling than going to work for the local water company as a microbiologist (a fancy name for shit shoveler according to Dave).

Keen to point out it’s not just traffic exchange work he does I am including something he’s working on, very much outside the reign of sales and marketing.

Dave also creates banners and icons which can be bought direct from 123rf.com which he says is a great resource for anyone developing websites.

If you like Dave’s work and want him to help you can find out more here.

Brevity is Jake’s way.  Ask him about anything unrelated to the situation in hand and if he’s not short he’s definitely rude.  I will tell him about this blog post but he won’t bother to read it.  I can safely make some innocuous criticism of him and know he’ll never find out.  If he did he’s not one to get mad, he will get even in his own way.

He’s not the kind of person many companies would employ after an interview, little would they realise an interview with him serves only one purpose and it’s not theirs.  Small talk and “getting to know each other” is something other people waste their time on.  He’s not a people person.

So why does he head up the sales department?  Today a customer complained that Jake is not helpful, a criticism any business owner would take seriously, your not going to make sales if the instrument of profit is blunt.  And Jake is blunt.

He’s there because statistically he is the best.  Combine everyone we have ever had on the sales desk and compare our results with his and he wins hands down each time.  If we consider his methods it only adds to the confusion:

1. Ask him a technical question and he will probably not reply, if he does he’s likely to be sarcastic and point out that if you can read his replies then how come you can’t read the notice in bold and highlighted in YELLOW that states he don’t answer technical questions.
2. Ask him something you have already asked him, even if it’s 5 years ago, and he’ll tell you to check what he said last time ‘cos nothings changed since then.  Get cocky with him and it just gets worse.
3. He never spends more than 20 seconds replying (we’ve timed him, we start the timer when his eyes drop to the keyboard).
4. He doesn’t bother reading more than 3 or 4 lines of your message.  If you ask more than one question he’ll only answer the first.  If you ask him why he’ll tell you that your attention span will be lost and you probably won’t notice.  He knows this from experience.  If the second and subsequent questions are important to you, then you will ask again, but then, they’ll be the first question won’t they?
5. You cannot upset Jake, that perhaps is one of his strengths.  Say something that you know will upset him, you know the kind of thing, the email that you instantly wish you had not sent.  Well don’t worry, Jake knows no evil (well, except Google, he thinks they’re out to get him, we point out that Google’s out to “get” everyone and everything but he still won’t use them).

So what is it that makes Jake so succesful?  Are we losing interest in the human element of a sale?  I don’t think so.  The Internet is a great place for people to get to know you.  Perhaps it’s his naive charm?  Nah.  Ask Jake and he says “I don’t sell, people buy, I’m an order taker not a door to door sales jockey flogging stuff people don’t want.”

In the privileged position that I have as his boss I decided to have a chat with him about it today and this is what happened:

Martyn:  Jake, a customer has complained that you are not helpful and [Jake interrupts]

Jake: Yeh, I know who that was, they didn’t like it when I said I can’t help them and they need to go ask on the forum.

Martyn: OK, I’d like to have a chat about the way we sell [Jake doesn't wait for me to finish]

Jake:  It’s easy, people ask questions, I answer; they buy or they don’t, that’s it.

Martyn: I was hoping to hear more along the lines of how you do it, what is your secret?  How come you sell more than anyone else, especially when some folks appear not to, ummm, get on with you so well?

Jake:  Dunno, are we done?

And before I could answer Jake had turned and was answering an enquiry.  So there you have it.  The indomitable Jake.  If he’s upset you or doesn’t answer your questions at least take some comfort knowing you aren’t the only one.  If you know what his secret formula for success is please let us know, I think we’d all like to know.

Dave’s been at it again, www.police-traffic.com is themed traffic exchange as you might expect.  The inside has a slight naughty twist with a rather unusual villain.  Not sure you could call it erotic but certainly sensual!