Free Traffic ExchangesIncrease website traffic with free traffic exchanges and viral advertising programs.

The manual traffic exchanges have gained lot of popularity today as being one of the most reliable methods that people can use to garner more traffic to their website. The problem however is that there is many service providers who are out to exploit the desperate webmasters. This is what calls for the need to learn a few tips to help in the choosing of the most reliable company to hire. The following suggestions will help in the finding of the best provider in manual traffic exchanges.

The first thing that one should look at is the experience of the target company. Manual traffic exchanges have gained lots of popularity and the provision of the services has proven to be the most lucrative business that one can turn to. This is what has led to the presence of unreliable service providers who are out to exploit the clients. Looking at the experience of the target exchange can help in determining their reliance. The new firms might be promising but the problem is that not all of them can be trusted and their services might be unreliable. The experienced manual traffic exchanges are adept in traffic generation and their years of experience have armed them with great skills to help them offer the service with absolute reliance. It is therefore imperative that one sticks with the experienced manual traffic exchanges in the industry.

The second thing that one should look at in the target traffic exchange is their number of members. As much as the belief that the experienced exchanges have more members holds water, it is imperative that one takes time to assess them personally to prove that their members are reliable. Traffic generation is all about the number of members that the target exchange has. If the target exchange has more members, chances are that the traffic will be reliable and instant. This is unlike the service providers with few members. To reap the best from the manual traffic exchanges, it is imperative that one rests with the providers who have the highest number of members.

The available bonuses should also be considered. The main aim of getting the traffic exchange services is to increase on the traffic that is gained in the target website. The truth however is that it never hurts to gain more benefits from the use of the method through bonuses. Most of the service providers offer bonuses to lure more clients to them. The getting of such bonuses can help in bettering the performance of the website while using the manual traffic exchanges.

Upgrades tend to be inevitable for the enthusiastic webmasters. However, after an upgrade in the manual traffic exchanges, a certain fee is incurred. It is therefore advised to choose the service provider who offers the most reliable fees on the services. This will help in the reduction of the expenses and thereby increase the rift between the profits made and the expenses. Using expensive services in manual traffic exchanges will not benefit the development of the website.

Yes, you read that right. Traffic Witch is now 50000 members strong!

We launched just before Thanksgiving in 2008, and we have had truly awesome people supporting us each step of the way. We want to publicly thank each and every one of you who have helped us reach this terrific achievement.

I dare not try to compose a list of those who have helped, because I am concerned about leaving someone out. And every single member of Traffic Witch is important to us, so thank you to ALL of you.

As a way to celebrate this milestone we will have a drawing every day for the next seven, today inclusive.

There will be 5 Winners every day.

1 x $5
2 x 500 credits
1 x 1000 banners
1 x 1000 text links

All you have to do is surf at least 200 pages
in a day.

We will draw the 5 winners every day and assign
the prizes to the accounts.

You do not need to put in a support ticket, or do anything else besides surf your 200 pages each day. Our very own support admin, Catherine Heiter, will check the surfing stats daily and do a drawing for us. She will post the winnings to each account, and we will send out a list of the winners next week after this celebration is finished.

So get on over to Traffic Witch and surf your 200 pages now, then come on back for the next six days and do the same. Catherine will take care of you!

One quick note: please keep in mind that the Traffic Witch server rolls over at 6 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time (GMT -4), due to the fact that it is located in my home country of Germany. So you will want to plan on your surfing sessions to accommodate that and ensure you get your 200 pages daily to qualify for the drawing!

Thanks, once again, to ALL of our wonderful supporters and members. It is because of YOU that we reached this outstanding milestone. We could not have done it without you!

Guido Nussbaum

IPN is the acronym for the Internet Payment Network that many program owners integrate into their scripts so that any payments made via PayPal, AlertPay, 2Checkout and other online payment processors are automatically accredited to a member’s account.

While this is a reliable script, for the most part, it does require a little cooperation from the member in order for the transaction to be accredited properly.

Here are just a few tips to help you so that your automatic payments can be properly processed seamlessly and effortlessly by the script:

1) Make certain that your online payment processor email address matches the one you have on your program account. If you are using PayPal or Alert Pay, you should be able to add a certain amount of email addresses to your account. But you would do well to try to use only one email address at all times, and be certain that it matches your account to which you are making the payment.

Please see the note below that if a payment processor account is used by more than one person, this needs to differ slightly.

2) Make a note of your transaction identification number when you complete the transaction on the payment processor. Some programs will send you to a “thank you” page upon completion and ask you for that so that there is a record in their “back office” for future reference.

3) Be certain that you use the drop down box on the thank you page to identify which payment processor you used to make the payment.

4) If the thank you page asks for your userid number, you will want to furnish that as well. So if there is a userid number on your account for which you are making the purchase, be sure to have that handy.

5) If your registered email address with the program does not match your payment processor email address, then you may need to note the registered email address on the form you fill out to inform the program owner of your purchase. So make certain you have that handy as well.

Providing all information that the form requests is just as much for your own protection as for that of the program owner. It may be useful if, at some time in the future, you need to ask a question about your purchase. Therefore it is important that you keep all pertinent data for your accounts updated and someplace that you can access while filling out forms and/or purchase orders. I highly recommend that you put together a little file that you can store on your computer with your usernames, userid numbers, registered email addresses with each of your accounts and any other data that you may have run across when dealing with payment forms online.

Note: If you share an online payment processor with someone else, and you both have accounts with the same online programs, be certain that you register different email addresses for your accounts so that the IPN accredits the correct account for the purchase. Using one email address for all purchases, regardless of the account owner’s name, will cause the IPN to seek out the first account that comes up in a database, and that may not necessarily be the one for which you wished the purchase to be accredited. If you at least add your partner’s email address to your payment processor account, and use that when he or she purchases from the shared account, then the IPN will be more likely to properly accredit the right account.

Ex: My partner and I both have account on XYZ program. We both make purchases, and are upgraded. In order for our separate purchases to be processed through ABC Payment Processor using the IPN, I add my own email account to ABC, and my partner adds his or hers. Then when I make a purchase at XYZ program and enter my email address, the IPN knows to look for the account with that registered email. When my partner makes a purchase and uses his or her email address to complete the form, the IPN knows to seek that one out rather that accrediting MY account. This is also why it is helpful to have your own data for your account for which you are making the purchase on hand. If the email address does not come up, then the script will look for the userid number or username – depending on how the script is programmed to respond.

I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping your payment processor information up-to-date. I have seen payments fail to post to accounts correctly so many times that I have lost count. And then a member is angry because the IPN failed to do its job. The problem with that is that the IPN can only do what it was meant to do, and that is to seek out the account with the information provided by the purchaser. So if you want to be sure that you get what you paid for, it is up to you to either register that new email address on your payment processor, or use your payment processor email to register with programs in which you are likely to make purchases.

This article was written by our own support admin for two of my programs, Catherine Heiter. She works on the backend of Traffic Witch and Viral Traffic Bar, and sees these problems almost every single day. She hopes that the information above might help some of our members to be more knowledgeable and prepared when making purchases online with programs that have the IPN integrated into them.

If you are new to Internet Marketing and online business, you may well find yourself caught up in a dilemma having to do with not being able to tell where your best advertising results are coming from. This is where a good tracking program might be of the best use to you. In fact, it is almost imperative that you track your results so you are not wasting your money, time and efforts on advertising venues that do not produce positive results!

A good tracking program will allow you to see from where you are getting your best results. It will also allow you to test different campaigns and even split-test to find what advertising is working the best for you. Setting up one or more advertising formats such as squeeze or splash pages and then tracking which ones are attracting prospects will help you to focus your efforts.

Being able to make two or more squeeze or splash pages for the same product or service and then split-testing them to see what is working and knowing what advertising venues such as traffic exchanges, FFAs, safelists, search engines, etc., are sending prospects to you for you to generate sales and/or signups is very important if you really want to succeed in online marketing.

A really good tracking program should allow you to track your banners and text ads as well. This is a form of advertising that CAN be very effective but knowing what is and is not working should be just as important as your squeeze and splash pages statistics. If you use a tracking program that breaks your statistics down into geographical regions this will also be of great benefit toward you being able to target your advertising efforts for optimum results.

A truly good tracking program will also have a built-in site checking system to assist you in being certain that your URLs you are advertising do not cause problems in the advertising venues you choose to use for your efforts. Some venues will not allow certain programs. Others may not allow specific scripts or embedded coding on your page. So it is best to know in advance whether or not you meet the requirements for using the sources in your online ventures.

It also helps to know what browsers are being used the most and being able to ascertain whether or not your URLs are compatible with the more popular ones. So consider this when choosing your tracker program. An excellent source for this feature and more is

Hits Connect

Another truly excellent tracking program is

TE Toolbox

Both of these programs do have the site checker built into them. They each have slightly different features that may suit your tracking needs. It is best for you to try both of them and then decide which one is best for you, or use both for different venues. They each give you a free option to use, but I do recommend upgrading for maximum usage of the features they each supply.

It has been about 10 weeks since the launch of the new Social Browsing site called Sweeva.

Its creators Jon Olson, Tim Linden and Austin Hallock really seem to have put together something very unique and intriguing. The membership for the site now numbers over 20,000 and seems to grow every single day. The attraction has not diminished and the number of people who are reporting successful results as a by-product of “listening” to the constructive criticism of other members also grows exponentially.

The partners report that they have bigger plans in the pipeline for making Sweeva a more huge and phenomenal tool than it is already. They are not disclosing any details at this time, but state that the plans are so good that the site cannot help but grow even larger and more useful that it already is.

With the addition of the widgets provided for members to use and the new feature on the widgets that will allow folks to win prizes for clicking through, the excitement has built and a lot of folks are taking advantage of that.

Two of the partners, Jon Olson and Tim Linden, are also promoting the newly launched IM Faceplate, which seems to help socializing and advertising amongst those who sign up, create their faceplates and promote through it. For anyone who joins Faceplate in Jon or Tim’s downline, and who is a member of Sweeva, he or she is awarded 5000 Experience Points on Sweeva. If one is “in the know” about the function of the Experience Points, then he or she realizes immediately the value of this terrific award.

For those not familiar with how Sweeva works, here are a few pointers:

Ranks and Levels

Although it has not been fully disclosed how many ranks and levels there are on Sweeva, I am told that the more levels one completes, the more benefits are achieved in conjunction with a member’s account, whether upgraded or not. When one runs the full gamut of levels in a rank, one is moved to the next rank and can enjoy the privilege of even bigger benefits for each level achieved. It is my understanding that Pro members DO get bigger benefits and can eventually earn as many as 10 credits per page view when in the viewing area of Sweeva. Activities on Sweeva are awarded by Experience Points. It is not necessary for one to complete every single activity listed on the Awards area but the more that one participates, the more Experience Points one accumulates resulting in a higher level achieved.

Bidding Process

The bidding process can be a little confusing, if one has not “played around” with it and this seems to cause a lot of stress for some folks. Here’s a little more on how that works. After one has entered sites and those have passed the TE Toolbox site checker test, one can then open the Bids page and begin the bidding process. To bid on a site, the member must choose it through the little drop down box at the top of the page after clicking on the button to place a bid. Once the site is opened, members see a schedule of days and hours from which to choose for the script on Sweeva to consider accepting the bid. The script will give a member the recommended bid for the time slot(s) chosen, or one can decide independently of the suggestion how much to bid. Then one must allot enough traffic credits to the site to cover the bid amount at least once. This gives the member the opportunity to allot as many credits as he or she is comfortable doing.

The script is designed to “scan” the bids once about every 15 to 20 minutes. If one has the highest bid in place at that time, or if one has older bids, the script will accept the highest first and then the older ones with higher bid amounts.

Comments

The “chat” area on the Sweeva surfbar is in place to communicate with Sweeva members whose sites are currently being viewed by all of the ones who are surfing/viewing at that time. While socializing is encouraged, the area is actually there for critiquing the site currently in place on the viewing area on the left side of the browser. It is not acceptable to advertise one’s own site unless it is the one actually being viewed and members can be suspended from using the chat feature to do this.

Constructive criticism is welcome and definitely encouraged. “Generic” comments are not helpful and should be avoided, most especially if a member wishes for his or her comments to stand out and quite possibly be “starred” by other viewing members. Those “starred” comments can also earn a member Experience Points.

Traffic Credits and Experience Points

There is a difference in these two features. Traffic Credits may be earned or purchased. Experience Points are earned or awarded for activities on Sweeva. They cannot be used or converted to traffic credits. The amount of Traffic Credits and Experience Points earned increases as one moves up in Rank on Sweeva. Of course, Pro members earn higher awards of each than do free members.

Earning Money on Sweeva

Sweeva members can earn money only by having downline members who upgrade or make purchases. Pro members receive a higher percentage than do free members. No one can earn cash by viewing/critiquing other members’ sites. Sweeva is definitely NOT a paid-to-surf site and its owners do NOT buy back traffic credits.

As you can see, Sweeva is not a typical traffic “exchange” It is social browsing at its best. So if you are not already signed up, join today!

Autoresponders should be used for two primary purposes:

1) To build your business mailing list
2) To inform your mailing list members when you have something worth their time and interest.

Frivilous use and overmailing to your list can cause you to lose prospects very quickly. It is imperative that you build a good working relationship with your list before you inundate it with every new program or product that comes along. So here are just a few guidelines to get you started.

First of all, to entice prospects to join your list, you need to have an excellent product that you can give to them in exchange for their names and email addresses. Some over-distributed, out-of-date, recycled ebook/product is not advisable. Seek out a quality product or service that you can offer for free. If you have purchased a product that you wish to give away, make certain that you are not violating the rights for which you have paid before giving it away. Resell rights on products do not necessarily always include giveaway privileges. So read the Terms of Service for the product/service before you hand it out as a free gift.

Secondly, make certain that you have everything in place and working properly before you put your ads out for prospects. Your autoresponder needs to be working completely and you should know exactly where to send your prospects after they give you their information, so that they can get what you promised them for doing so. If you are offering downloadable products, test them BEFORE giving the link(s) to your prospects. They should NOT have to come back to you and complain because they did not receive what they were promised!

Set your autoresponder up according to the instructions given by the service provider. Any good service will give you exact instructions in simple terms so that you do not have to “jump through hoops” to use the service. Be sure that you are familiar with how everything works BEFORE you set up and start advertising. If youa re offered a pdf or videos to read or view, do it! You need to at least have a general idea of what to do before you start the setup process.

If you are directed to the service through an affiliate link, do NOT go back to the person who invited you to join. He or she is most likely simply an affiliate and will not be able to give you instruction as well as the support person(s) for the program itself. So make certain you know how to contact your autoresponder service personnel before venturing into the setup process.

Once you have everything in place, be sure to test the service yourself. Sign up and “walk” through the whole process to ensure that all your links work correctly and that your prospect will indeed be directed to the gift you have offered to him or her.

Also ensure that you add a contact email address to your autoresponder series/emails so that your list members can get in touch with you directly in the event of a problem. You need to make yourself available, or have someone to whom they can reach out, “just in case”. A good business relies on excellent customer care and service if you are “in it to win it”. This should include your availability to your prospects, or your willingness to have someone to be there for them.

Once your prospective future purchasers/members have joined, send them only the “best of the best” offers. Do your “due diligence” before you ask other people to purchase or join anything. If you are new to the Internet Marketing “game”, then reach out to people who have been around for a while and ask questions about products and services that you may be seeing for the first time, but that actually have been around for years. Just because it is new to you does not mean that it is a brand new service or product. So do NOT fill your autoresponder emails/messages with things like “Brand new”, “Never seen before”, “Just released” or any other wording that leads the prospect to think he or she is getting something that has never been offered in the past. I see emails every day from people offering me products and services that I know for a fact have been around for at least a year – most often more than that. So be confident by checking first before you use all sorts of superlatives and “new and different” verbiage in your emails.

Make sure that you have also set your autoresponder up to send a “thank you” note to your prospect after he or she purchases or joins whatever it is that you have offered. Yes, the program/service will most likely have its own “thank you”, but nothing pleases YOUR mailing list member like getting a personal note from YOU for him or her having taken action after seeing your offer. So be sure that you can do this, then and make it happen. A happy customer is a repeat customer and if you are trying to earn money online, you most definitely want repeat customers!

The autoresponder of choice for my business is: Traffic Wave

As an online business person who runs several programs, I get many complaints about various problems that members encounter.

Frequently, I have found that these problems do not actually lie with the programs themselves. Because of the variety of sites that one encounters when surfing online it’s entirely possible – if one does not have adequate protection from malware, viruses, etc. and sometimes even when one does – to pick up “bugs” on one’s computer. Many of them can be quite annoying and/or harmful.

My advise to anyone who owns a computer, and uses it online, is to employ the following steps at least once weekly:

1) Run your anti-virus and spyware/malware removal programs

Make certain that you always have adequate protection on your computer. A good anti-virus program is an absolute must – if you intend to keep your computer and not have to replace it due to damaging viruses, worms, trojans etc. You can Google for a list of programs that will provide more than adequate protection. There are several no cost/low cost programs available to you. However I do recommend that you use one that you actually pay for, if you’re going to be working online extensively. While free is good, it is not necessarily always best. And one must spend a little money, in order to get what one really needs to work/function optimally online.

Never run more than one anti-virus program at a time on your computer. This can cause conflicts that actually defeat the purpose of having the program. Choose one good, dependable anti-virus program and keep it updated. Most reliable ones will have a feature that will allow you to set the updates to run and download automatically. If you prefer, you should be able to choose the option to update manually on the more reputable ones. I allow mine to notify me and download automatically. On my schedule, “set and forget” works best. Choose what works for you.

There are programs that provide anti-virus and spyware/malware removal programs all in one. But, I prefer to keep mine separate. For removing spyware and malware, my personal preferences are SpyBot Search & Destroy (which is free, by the way – I give them a small donation each year to help support them) and AdAware (both free and upgraded versions available).

I use both of the above programs. What one doesn’t pick up and get rid of for you, one of the others will. I’ve never encountered any conflicts with these, so I suggest using both.

2) Clear your browser cache, cookies and history

This can be confusing to anyone who has not done it before. But the process is actually very simple.

For Windows XP, which is my operating system (OS):
a) Click on Start, on the lower lefthand corner of your computer screen taskbar
b) From the menu that comes up, open the Control Panel on your computer
c) Right click, or double left click, and open Internet Options
d) On the General tab, you will see the button to delete cookies. This will clear out the cookies on your computer. So make sure that you have any pertinent data, such as passwords and important URLs, saved somewhere so you can replace them after this is done. I keep 3 x 5 index cards in a file box offline, and write down all this information, for later reference. This can also be quite useful, if your computer ever crashes. One can also do a backup file and save it to a cd, if one has a burner on their computer, as well. Either way, protect your important data before deleting anything from your hard drive.

On that same General tab, you will see the button to delete files. You’re not going to hurt anything if you click on that to delete temporary and unnecessary files. You have an option to view what files you are about to delete. If you are worried about doing that now, then wait on this step until you do a disk cleanup. Instructions for that will follow below.

You can also use that General tab to clear the history on your computer, or Internet Explorer 7 & above and Firefox browsers have options available on them to clear your browser history. This will clear out the sites (or “footprints”) that you have visited, and can help to keep potential hacking of your private data from those who seem to think they need to rip folks off for a living.

3) Do a disk cleanup and defrag on your computer

Again, open up the menu via the Start button on the taskbar at the bottom lefthand corner of your computer screen. Allow the big menu to come up for All Programs, find the link for Accessories, scroll down to the System Tools, and you will find the link for the Disk Cleanup.

When using the Disk Cleanup function – after the analysis is complete – it’s okay to click all of the boxes that show numbers on the right, except for “Catalog files for the Content Indexer”. NEVER EVER tell the system that you want it to do anything with that, unless you know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you will wind up having to reformat your hard drive. That’s the voice of experience talking, by the way. I royally messed up a computer once by checking that box.

Through the same System Tools file you can do a defragmentation, or defrag, on your computer. You can tell the system to analyze first, but it’s just easier to tell it to do the defrag. That step will both analyze and defrag for you.

4) Run a good registry cleaner program and optimize your hard drive

An excellent registry cleaner/optimizer program is Registry Mechanic http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic/ . I started out with the free version five years ago, and promptly upgraded. I’ve tried other programs since then, but have always gone back to that one. It’s really not necessary to optimize the hard drive every week, but at least do that once a month. That feature is available on the upgraded version of RM.

Be sure that your firewall is in place to block unscrupulous people from accessing your computer remotely. Windows has a firewall built in. You can use that one, or you may use one that you get through searching online. I do recommend that you use a reputable one for which you pay. Free ones are ok, but you have no guarantees that you are completely protected from the less honest people out there who would like nothing better than to access your private data for their own use.

Again, a word of advise – never try to run two firewalls at the same time. The results can be a royal pain in your backside. One good firewall should be more than sufficient to protect you, your computer and your private data from hackers.

Should you find that you are having a problem accessing sites that you want to visit, ensure that your computer is set to accept cookies from the desired site. If that fails to resolve the issue, one can always disable the anti-virus and firewall functions. If this fixes the problem, then you may need to tweak your settings on one or both programs to allow the site to open and load properly. Never, ever leave the anti-virus and/or firewall off for long. Turn them back on after resolving your problem.

While the above information is basically an overview of what you can do to protect yourself and your computer, it’s comprehensive enough to do just that. There are many options available when one uses Google to search them out.

One final word of advise – do what we call “due diligence” before purchasing or downloading any programs to your computer. Ask around, see what others are using and recommending. Read reviews. Use trial periods that are available before purchasing. Make certain that whatever you choose is going to do what you expect it to do. There are no absolute guarantees with any programs, but many provide much better services with their upgrades. Be sure that there is sufficient support available for any programs you use. The contact information should be clearly stated on the download site, and it should be very easy to put in a support request and get a reply. Test that before you purchase.

An excellent resource for programs can be found at Downlaod.com. There are product reviews available onsite to help you determine what you want to try. And there are many support forums and sites that do independent reviews about numerous programs. You need to Google for those. The Google Site Advisor should give you an indication of whether or not a site can be trusted.

If you have a question or problem that I have not addressed here, I can be reached via email at support at trafficwitch.com. If I don’t have an answer for you, personally, I do have terrific associates who can probably supply what we need; and I’ll learn with you.

Working online is dynamic and ever-changing. It’s always advisable to keep up with those changes and go with them, when they can help you improve and move ahead in your online endeavors.

Finally, someone reinvented the wheel so it actually does work better.

What? Ok. So they didn’t actually reinvent the wheel. But that caught your attention, didn’t it?

Well, here’s something else that most definitely SHOULD be at the top of your attention-grabbing list. TE Command Post is the baby of Paul Kinder and Scott Martin. Both of these gentlemen are very active in the traffic exchange industry, and both own numerous te-related programs as well as several traffic exchanges.

TE Command Post is the first program of its kind to be released to the online public. It allows you to find your traffic credits, banner and text link impressions/credits on the 110+ traffic exchange currently listed on the site. As a member, you can request that your favorite traffic exchange be added as one of these. There is also a link provided to traffic exchange owners themselves to request their exchange be added.

Members can also earn up to 50% commissions, depending on their membership level with TE Command Post. Since this is a tool that ALL traffic exchange members truly need to have and use, and the upgraded membership levels do provide a few little perks that the free members cannot get, the potential for making money is very good.

Upgraded members also have the option to add banner and text link ads to TE Command Post. And the potential for building one’s downline through the resources provided on TECP increase as you go up from Free to Silver to Gold. These are called “jumplinks” on TECP.

So when you sign up, be sure to fill in all your usernames and userids in the appropriate places on the traffic exchanges and in the resources area.

All members will find a Quick Start Guide on the member’s home page, and each of the links in the menu are easy to navigate and understand. All in all, this is a great tool to have at you command. So grab your spot today!

TE Command Post

I am very pleased to say that we have a very well-grounded support person who handles some of my programs. She is very dedicated to what she does, and tries very hard to treat everyone with whom she has contact in a very professional and respectful manner. She tries to treat others the way SHE wants to be treated. She knows her business, and gives her very best – no matter how trivial the matter.

Having said that, she must have had a very rough weekend handling the support for the 12 clients and 30 plus programs for whom/which she does customer care. Reason I say that is cause she’s ranting today about some things, and she’s not the ranting sort of person. lol

Here are some of her pet peeves that she was willing to allow me to share with others:

1) When you put in a support/contact request/ticket, please disclose ALL information for which you are asked. Supply not only your full name, but your username, user id number (if applicable), email address with which you registered with the program or used as contact to purchase the service/product and any other pertinent data that you think might be of use to the support person trying to locate your account/information and help you.

If you have a problem, then describe it in detail. The help you receive can only be based on the input you give. If you do not describe in detail what is going on, don’t expect the support person to read your mind and understand what your problem may be. After all, he or she is a human being too. If the person has to email back and forth with you to get what he or she needs to handle your problem, this is time that is wasted due to the fact that the details necessary from the start would have been much more helpful to both you and him/her in the problem being resolved more quickly – and probably with a lot less frustration for both parties involved.

2) My support person says that she has very fine clients from all around the world who would NOT take money that does not belong to them, mislead anyone or send out unsolicited email. She gets very angry when her clients are accused of any of that. She says that she feels it is the responsibility of the person who purchases to know what it is that he or she purchases, know where he or she signs up to receive mail – and from whom – and to read an offer very carefully BEFORE making a purchase.

She says that someone who prefaces a request or demand for help with an accusation against one of her clients puts her in a very bad mood from the start, and she then has to fight herself in order to remain professional and respectful. But she also says that being an “Internet Cowboy”, as she likes to call people who take that stance, does not solicit good feelings and is likely to get a professional but also very abrupt reply.

She will go out of her way to help people who ask in a professional manner and explain exactly what it is he or she needs to get “straightened out, or their problem resolved”, as she puts it. But those who are combative from the start really “get under her skin”, and this woman has been doing customer service, of some sort, both on and offline for more years than some of us have even been alive. She believes in courtesy, respect and professionalism from people who are trying to do business online. She says that “being behind a computer is no excuse for bad manners, rudeness, abusive language or false accusations”.

3) She also states that if someone is purchasing a product or service online, be it by Internet payment processor or by credit/debit card or bank account, he or she needs to know exactly what is being purchased, how much it costs – and save a copy of the transaction for future reference. She recommends keeping a file on your computer, or making a copy of the transaction and putting it in a file offline. Either way you will save yourself, AND the person trying to help you, a lot of headaches if you can easily access that information.

Whether it is a support staff member, or even the owner of a program, whom one contacts for assistance in these financial matters it is most helpful to him or her if this information is readily available so that a transaction can be found and dealt with expeditiously.

If you establish an upgrade subscription and wish to cancel that anytime in the future, it is YOUR responsibility to handle that.

Payments made via PayPal, AlertPay or any other online payment processor can usually be canceled by finding the last transaction made and following the “Details” link provided beside it to locate the original transaction that established the subscription. PayPal also provides a place on one’s account so that ALL current and active subscriptions can be easily located and viewed.

For heaven’s sake, do NOT put in a complaint with the payment processing company BEFORE trying to resolve the problem by the less controversial methods that are in place for you to employ. Filing a dispute – or threatening to do so – does not “win you any brownie points”, as my support person so aptly puts it, with the payee or support staff.

Payments made via debit/credit card or bank account may go through a payment processing center such as 2 Checkout. It is necessary for you to go to:

2Checkout

and put in a support ticket with the staff there to cancel a recurring payment. The organization requires private data from you to which the payee does NOT have access. So do not ask the payee to cancel for you. Take care of it yourself, and then you are assured that you will not be charged again.

Transactions on your account financial statement may well include a toll-free telephone number or an email address through which you can contact the payment processing agency. Check for that BEFORE you “hammer” the payee and complain about a payment.

It is the responsibility of the purchaser, not the payee, to handle these matters. It’s not the payee’s money that pays the subscription, and it’s not his or her responsibility to handle a customer’s/member’s personal finances for him/her. If you cannot find out where to cancel a recurring or subscription payment, then do contact the payee in a polite manner to find out. If he/she or his/her support staff is approached in a professional manner, you are very likely to get courteous and helpful information in return.

If one handles a subscription cancellation on a timely basis, and does not wait for the payee to take care of that, there is less likelihood that an “unplanned” payment is deducted from the funding originally set up to cover it. This will cut down considerably on not only YOUR stress level, but that of the person whom you might have to contact because of your lack of responsible actions. KNOW where your money is being spent, before it IS spent. Keep up with your subscriptions and recurring payments.

4) “Support and contact requests, contact emails and support ticket systems/help desks are not in place for people to solicit business or stick in autoresponder email addresses so that the support staff has to weed through and clean out a bunch of garbage so they can get to the people who really need their assistance. Do you know how aggravating it can be to have several pages of contact requests or support tickets to handle, and 50% or better of them are unsolicited requests, or ‘downright spam’ for one to participate in the sender’s ‘latest and greatest find/program/service’? Or please, let me have to delete a page or two of autoresponder messages because someone did NOT read the blasted Terms of Service, or doesn’t wanna be bothered to read emails that they agreed to receive from my clients!”

5) “Read what the terms and conditions are for claiming prizes and/or bonuses on programs in which you participate. Know what you have to do to claim your award or bonus so you do not have to ask for assistance with this. A support person/staff may handle hundreds of support requests in one day’s time, and really needs to be able to rely on the participants to do their own ‘due diligence’ before asking for help or expecting the support to take care of something for him or her that should not have required support assistance.

“Read the Terms of Service and Frequently Asked Questions, along with any other links found throughout a site. Many times, the assistance you may need is already somewhere on the site.”

6) Her last pet peeve that she spoke about was free members who expect EVERYTHING to be done for them and those paying members who expect to be “treated like royalty”, as she puts it.

Her statement was this,”Listen, I don’t care whether someone is a paying member or a free member. I will treat anyone with respect and courtesy who affords me the same. But, I am not here to do their work for them. They have to learn to take on a certain amount of the responsibility for learning how to do business online. My purpose is to guide them, assist with getting them started and to resolve problems that they may encounter, but I’ll be hanged if I’m gonna go into their darned accounts and do everything for them just because they are too lazy to read or don’t wanna take the time to learn to or do it for themselves! I’m very willing to help anyone who has truly put forth the effort, and still can’t figure it out, but even I have my limits as to what I have time to do for folks.

“They think THEIR schedules are busy or hectic? They think that their time is valuable? LOL. I’d LOVE to let them wear MY shoes for one day, and then tell me how busy they really are!”

She ended her rant here, and thanked me very graciously for listening. But I thought that the points she made were valid enough to share with you.

Think on these things, the next time you ask for help with a problem. There IS a human being on the receiving end of your request. Keep in mind that he or she is there to help, but you need to treat him or her as though you were face-to-face when you ask for that help.

If you are angry, upset or frustrated try to remember that you are STILL trying to do business with someone who may have never met you and does not know you. Act in a professional manner, treat that person with the respect with which YOU wish to be treated and I will bet you’ll get a lot more help and understanding in the long run.

Every once in a while, something truly spectacular is released on the Internet. When it comes to website advertising programs, Sweeva tops them all. Its owners are calling it “social browsing”, but it is much more than that. And it is so new and innovative that it’ll “rock your socks”!

Sweeva is the result of the collaborative efforts of Jon Olson, Tim Linden and Austin Hallock.

Jon and Tim are both veterans of the traffic exchange advertising venue – I Love Hits, StartXchange and SWAT Traffic. They have both been around almost since the inception of traffic exchanges and their expertise and knowledge definitely show through in the innovative concept behind Sweeva.

Jon also owns Net Marketing Forum and Hits Exchange News, and is co-owner of Affiliate Funnel. Tim owns Tim Linden’s Blog and an awesome photographic site called RI Photo. And both of them are co-owners at TE Toolbox. Austin owns Austin Hallock and is one of the very best programmers available online today!

Austin Hallock and Tim Linden have worked together on the programming to give us a truly unique and different script to use for our advertising efforts. All three of these people have worked very hard to put out one of the best advertising and networking programs that has been released in this decade.

The idea behind Sweeva is to allow the owners of websites to show their pages to the people who usually advertise and purchase through traditional traffic exchanges, as well as those who want to use search engine optimization tactics to get their pages seen on the Internet. All the members who are surfing at any given time are actually seeing the same site at the same time. This gives the owner of the site the opportunity to see in “real time” what others are saying, as well as a chance to respond and answer any questions the viewers might have.

There is a chat area integrated into the surfbar that will allow the viewers to give their thoughts and insight on the site currently showing. There have already been reports that the suggestions and recommendations made by members viewing other members’ web pages have led to “revamps” by the owners of the sites and that the changes they have made actually increased their signups and sales!

And this from a new program that has only been online for five days at the time of this post!

One must join Sweeva and try it out to appreciate the thought that went into it. The different levels that the members can attain, the awards they are given for participating, advertising, commenting and the way they get their sites seen are a work of art! Rumor has it that there is a big WOW factor built in, which is a secret only discovered by using Sweeva and all its features.

There are scads of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and My Space online, but none of those are set up to function like Sweeva. It’s the first of its kind, and there will surely be a lot of folks who will mimic it – since something this awesome is bound to become “all the rage” in the very near future. But there will only ever be ONE Sweeva and it’s the one you want to join NOW!

You truly DO want to be in on the beginning of something so new that it is destined to grow in proportion very fast! So go grab your spot on Sweeva right now, while it’s fresh on your mind.