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Michael Kelly, the current “King” of the Royal Surf traffic exchange, has announced some special deals on advertising credits and has also temporarily reduced the price of the new Royal Mage membership from $97 to $79. Both promotions are scheduled to run through August 31st.

Meanwhile, after logging in and surfing earlier today, I noticed that the tweaks for increasing the potential credit awards to the top five kingdoms seem to have been implemented, as the number of points being tallied on the Kingdom Stats page definitely seems higher than it what it was a few weeks ago. Also, the previously large gap between the #1 kingdom and the other four seems to have narrowed significantly, meaning that it is now possible to win more significant amounts of credits at the end of the week even if we do not place in the top kingdom (this equates to the top 20 individual surfers). The details of the special promotion are explained below:

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A person going by the moniker of “Queen Storm” (not to be confused with Stormspotter aka Bonnie Davis) has won the most recent Top Builder award at Medieval Hits. She is the owner of a relatively new PTR program called Castles Gold. I have tentatively joined her program because she is offering a very good advertising deal in a bid to gain new members and get her program off the ground. For only one dollar, you can get 100,000 banner impressions, 10,000 traffic exchange hits, one featured (front page) ad for two months, 10,000 featured banner rotations, and 500 clicks in the PTC section of the site. There is also a drawing for various cash prizes that will be held after 150 ad packages are sold.

Of course, the obvious disadvantage to all of this is the fact that because the PTR in question is a relatively new one, the advertising credits will have a rather limited audience in the early stages of the program. However, for such a low price, the credits can be bought in advance and saved up for a time when the program has more members, at which point the advertising will be worth far more than its initial cost. In the past, I have used this strategy quite effectively with PTR text link ads; if you can get in at the beginning when the advertising is still very cheap, it is possible to gain a substantial influx of traffic and referrals after the program really takes off. Here is the full text of the Medieval Hits update. Queen Storm’s piece begins after the third paragraph:
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The Royal Surf traffic exchange has taken steps to crack down on cheaters in an effort to increase the quality of the traffic to its members’ sites. The program has also added a new membership level called “Royal Mage” which is rather expensive at $97 but offers lots of advertising benefits including “personalized service” where the mundane tasks of managing one’s account can be handled by the Admin. Right now, this level is being limited to only 10 members, probably because that is the number of special advertising slots available to these members on the login page:

Hello Karl;

I want to pass on some important information.

While RoyalSurf promises unlimited traffic that’s fast, fun and free, make no mistake we are very serious about making sure that traffic remains high quality too.

One of our recent moves toward fulfilling this goal was to implement Admin verification of all sites for our Free members. We feel that the trade off in a smoother surfing experience makes it well worth the inconvenience. More importantly, this action seriously impedes those who would waste the hard-earned (or paid for) credits of our honest members.

We’ve also implemented many new script changes which include checking banners against our banned sites lists, checking login IP addresses against our banned IP address lists, and a few other checks that help keep in check dishonest people.

As a result of these changes you may notice some slowdown in traffic delivery. However, the net result will be an overall increase in the quality of delivered traffic you receive.

Some of you may have noticed that the Joust does not start the week with as large a pool of credits as it previously did. This is because we are doing a better job of shutting down cheaters than ever before, and because we’ve adjusted the tournament to potentially provide better prizes to all five of the top kingdoms.

The end result of these changes is that the overall credits given out to all 5 kingdoms have been increased, and it is more competitive too. The top kingdom will still earn a significant amount of credits more than the other 4 kingdoms, but the amount received by the remaining 4 kingdoms can now grow significantly more than before.

If you found yourself among the top 5 kingdoms in the past, but not in the top kingdom, you may have felt it wasn’t as rewarding as you had hoped it would be. Those with the competitive spirit will now find those rewards to be more satisfying now.

Beware my jousting knights… the changes to come in the near future may shake many a knight from their comfy heights. The challenges you’ll face will be worthy of a great knight and I expect many a new knight will arise to the challenge.

On a slightly different note, I want to make sure everyone knows that every membership level now earns redisual traffic from their direct referrals. The more members you refer, who remain active at RoyalSurf, the more traffic you will earn to your sites.

Okay, the primary reason for this email is to introduce the serious advertiser’s membership:

* The Royal Mage *
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On Friday, Share Ad Space implemented significant improvements to its new match game in response to frustrated members who were getting screened out of the game too early and were unable to reach the higher levels. Admin Rod Baker has improved the odds of completing the beginning levels somewhat by removing some of the “game over” boxes and has further sweetened the deal by offering a $10 prize to the first member who completes level five. Here are the details from that update:
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The new game that Share Ad Space mentioned in an update earlier this week has now been officially announced and implemented. Earlier tonight, I logged into my SAS account to check it out; so far, it seems to be working as promised. Although I did not play far enough into the game to advance in level, I played several short rounds and managed to achieve a favorable ratio of advertising credits gained vs. pages surfed (it was around 1.5:1 or so in my favor when I logged out).

One thing that helps is to write down the number of credits revealed under each box as you click them so that you can remember which boxes have the correct numbers under them when you need to make a match. This saves time in clicking boxes that you have already uncovered and will give you a better chance of having a favorable surf ratio overall. Here is the full update that explains the rules of the game in detail:
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Share Ad Space, a manual traffic exchange and advertising venue, sent out an email update today announcing some changes to the way upgrade credits will be handled at the site. Members who purchase more than one week of upgrade time will now receive all of their advertising credits up front rather than having a set portion of them doled out each week. Prices for the upgrades themselves have also been reduced by a factor of 20 percent. Lastly, a new game is in the works that promises to bring more fun to the surfing experience while awarding bonus credits, small cash prizes, and even free upgrade days to active members. Here is the official word from the site’s owner and founder, Rod Baker:
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The manual traffic exchange world has generated a small flurry of updates over the past two days. Since none of them are really long enough to necessitate separate posts, I will combine them all here and provide brief summaries. Last night I finally started commenting on some other NoNofollow blogs in order to begin the process of generating some much needed traffic and backlinks. After a few days, I will focus on writing some more regular articles and stories, but I also need to take care of the promotional side of things so that I have enough readers to make this blogging effort worthwhile. Meanwhile, here are the latest reports from my currently active traffic exchanges:
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The Royal Surf traffic exchange is running a contest that will last until approximately one week from today. The top 40 surfers for each day will win 25 credits each and an entry into a drawing that will take place at the end of the contest period.

Meanwhile, the prices for weekly advertising rotations have been reduced, and the time period for the ad rotations has been extended to ten days. Admin Catherine Heiter has also announced that a blog and newsletter format may be implemented for future updates at Royal Surf and two other traffic exchanges, which will obviate the need to post these updates here. But for now, you can read the text of the latest email:
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The admin at Tip Top Traffic is offering a chance for a free upgrade in the surfbar bonuses and has also reduced the timer to 15 seconds from the previous 20.

I joined this particular traffic exchange about one week ago from an offer in the “Bribes” section of Click Voyager, where someone was offering a generous bonus of 50,000 credits at Click Voyager to sign up under him at Tip Top Traffic. The only condition was that I needed to surf 200 pages first and confirm my new account. I have now done this, so I logged back into Click Voyager and pasted the welcome mail confirmation into the appropriate box there to claim the bribe. Now I just have to wait and hope that the other person receives the claim properly and releases the credits.

Meanwhile, here is the update from the new exchange that explains the latest news:
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In previous updates, Medieval Hits admin Larry Phillips announced that he is offering one free referral to everyone who brings in a new member before August 1. The prospective member has to surf at least 250 pages in order for us to qualify for the bonus referral. He has also caught two cheaters and removed them from the database. Today a new update has been released announcing that we have officially reached the 250 member mark:

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This week’s Top Builder award at Medieval Hits went to Richard Uttley, who has managed to bring in a sizable number of referrals over the past week. While his article is rather brief, he touches on a useful strategy that I have used for other programs with mostly favorable effects. As Richard explains, solo email ads can generate a quick burst of referrals, especially if the program that you are promoting does not cost any money to join (at least not initially):

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The traffic exchange Link Crews has switched hosts and moved to an upgraded server in order to improve surfing performance. Now that the move has been completed and operations are proceeding as planned, the admin is offering double the normal points per page surfed for the next two days and is also throwing in some free impressions that can be used for banner or text link campaigns. So far the surfing has been going well for me; the double points bonus is really helping because it is allowing me to climb through the crew ranks much faster than before, which translates into more credits per page view. Here are the actual details from the most recent email:

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The admin of Royal Surf has been slowed down somewhat by weather-related issues recently due to widespread flooding and severe thunderstorms across many areas of Texas. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing referral contest and some concern that promoters of the exchange may not be referring “quality” members. However, with at least 200 pages of surfing required before a referral can be officially credited, the problem of “tire kickers” inflating the statistics should be significantly reduced compared to most other traffic exchanges. Here is the latest update:

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In addition to the big win from the June contest at Medieval Hits, I also managed to win another contest last month at Crazy-Traffic, a fairly new and promising traffic exchange. These were the final standings according to the email from Admin yesterday:

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Well, this one doesn’t really need much further explanation. Here is what I saw on the members page when I logged into Medieval Hits today. My feature piece that I was asked to write is placed between the green lines. And yes, the text was actually centered like that!

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