This section deals with operating your traffic, banner and text exchange script. By now you should have a basic configuration. While using this section of the manual you may decide to return to the configuration section to make modifications. When relevant there will be links to the correct section.
In 1993 I visited a friend and entrepreneur in Aberdeen. He raised investment for a new 7 figure telecommunications business. He built the largest online BBS, largest in cpu power and disk space. He offered free unlimited disk space - a facility not offered by anyone else at the time, and few still to this day.
He proudly demonstrated a warehouse of racked computers, routers and his own in house exchange. I was impressed but I could not see where he was going to make the money. His answer was the business is in the community. He did the unthinkable, at least unthinkable in the early 90's. He convinced institutional investors to invest without a clear idea of where or what the return would be. He speculated he would be able to offer fee paying services people would want to buy once the community existed.
He was right. He struck a deal with Sabre (and later Galileo) and created the first online travel ticket booking system, the sale of that single business put the investment in the black and it wasn't long before he was on a flight to California to became a leading investor in the Internet gold rush.
The whole process encompassed his belief in the three w's, which at the time would have meant nothing to anyone but now could be mistakingly interpreted as the world wide web, in fact it stands for work, wisdom and wealth. Work comes first and from that we build Wisdom which builds Wealth.
Building a community takes work and the wisdom or information needed and offered by and for the community creates wealth. I have a theory, one that's not popular in todays growing social media scene. I believe traditional media companies are crapping themselves as they watch the rise of social media programs such as Facebook and MySpace. It's not the lost revenue from advertising that worries, them, it's the growing trend of preference over traditional media. Advertising on these platforms brings little revenue to the companies (per capita) and even less for advertisers. While Facebook is getting smarter with demographics bottom line doesn't seem to be punching any holes in the balance sheet. What's scaring traditional media companies is the looming death of advertising as we have known it for the past few thousand years and no one really understands the replacement, no one even knows what it is yet. Some spottly little tike age 13 is about to become Bill Gates to the power of 10 and not even goverments will stop him. It's the community that has the power now, even children who we have previously been able to suppress by restricting his or her pocket money, or by law, it is they that now have the power to control and decide what it is they do online and more often than not they are making more than they spend.
To become rich you get given money such as a lottery win or inheritance, or you sell a lot. Assuming you don't expect to inherit or win it then you have to earn it by selling something. Investigate any online business making money and you will see success is often measured by how many members they have as opposed to how much money they have (or have spent). This is because all investors expect to be able to sell large communities lot's of stuff. The problem is they have lost focus. Facebook application writers (ie public applications hosted by facebook but nothing to do with facebook) will make more money than facebook (the company) by building communities and then offering services outside facebook, if facebook were to try and charge program writers or the members for this service they would disappear within hours of the announcement.
But you have the opportunity to create a community happy to pay for your service from day one. Right from the start they are there to make money and everyone knows you have to spend money to make money. It's not like you are trying to sell them a new car that is going to see them tied into a "contract" for the next 5 years! Deciding to buy from you is about as difficult a decision to make as to whether to have a side salad with your lunch (and costs less too).
After your first quarters trading you may only have 25 regular customers, but that's 25 more than all social media sites combined and they have attracted more than 500 million members! Not a single member pays for the service offered by the site. You are in the enviable position of knowing how money is really made on the net, a secret that eludes even the most boastful self determined guru's. Your members join you because they want to promote their website, they are in business and they see you as a business they wish to associate themselves with. Visitors to facebook and MySpace join them to have fun and meet socially with other members. While many of them want to make money, they don't see those sites as a place to do that. They may find out about business they want to be involved in but there is no way for them to make money using the sites. Unless you are making templates or programs for them then you are not making money, and there are only ever two things you can be doing in life making money or spending it!
Ask yourself why you purchased a traffic exchange and you may find the answer. Ok so you wanted to make money, but if that's the case why did you buy a traffic exchange? Why not go down the local scrap yard, find a half decent or classic car and sell it on eBay for a profit? Deep down or maybe subconsciously you know that to sell something you need an audience and the bigger the audience then the better chance you have.
Ever heard someone say the money's in the list? Creating an exchange is mroe than just a list, you have a community that responds to changes you make to your strategy right away. Program Operation is about that strategy. You could throw up your exchange, create a splash page, advertise it in a thousand other exchanges and expect to build a membership. But there's more to a community than membership. You have to share with them what makes you... you!
As you operate your program think about your theme and put yourself in your members shoes, whatever the subject, think about what you would like to see at every stage, and remember you can completely transform the graphics and all the text of your site to suit whatever theme you choose.