Karlonia.com

While searching for sites other than Constant-Content that offer inexpensive non-duplicate content articles, I ran across an interesting forum called NamePros.com. Generally speaking, forums are a good source of information and an integral part of website promotion. You can use them to develop a positive reputation for yourself and your brand name while simultaneously getting backlinks and traffic to your website through your signature.

This particular forum that I discovered today, however, seems to offer a good deal more than the usual routine of making posts while quietly promoting one’s site. Although the main topic of NamePros.com is domain names, it covers many other areas such as web design, website development, programming, search engine optimization, and various aspects of Internet marketing and making money online. They also have a Community section where you can discuss off-topic issues and introduce yourself to the other forum participants.

Perhaps more interestingly, they also have a Marketplace section that is large enough to be considered a forum of its own. There are many separate categories within this section that allow you to offer purchases, sales, or trades of everything from domain names to article content, and just about anything else that would be of interest to a webmaster. The forum even has its own currency called “NameBucks”, usually abbreviated NP$, that can be used for low to mid-value transactions between registered members.

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Before the infamous database crash back in July 2006 that took down both of his sites, Rod Baker of Share Ad Space fame had launched a relatively new site called MillionHitsLotto.net. It was essentially a manual traffic exchange, but with an interesting twist. Instead of surfing for credits according to a predetermined ratio, members would surf a certain number of sites (usually seven, but occasionally the numbers were tweaked a little bit) and then choose five numbers on a virtual lottery ticket. Each ticket submitted would give members a chance to win credits according to how many numbers on the ticket matched the lottery results.

The rules were adopted from the New York State lottery; members choose five numbers from 1 to 39, and if anyone managed to match all five numbers with the official results, that person won the jackpot. The jackpot at Million Hits Lotto starts at one million credits and gradually increases each day until at least one member matches the lucky numbers. Members can also win credits for matching two, three, or four numbers, and with a little luck (and perhaps a few referrals along the way) it is possible to maintain a favorable surf ratio while getting free advertising for your sites.

Yesterday Rod Baker managed to resurrect and re-launch the Million Hits Lotto site. From what I can tell, the rules are pretty much the same as before, although it looks like people who were members of the original site will need to sign up again. Here is the official announcement from the program owner:

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After running a special promotion over the weekend that attracted more members and advertisers, Rod Baker of Share Ad Space sent out an email encouraging people to target more countries in order to even out the distribution of pages among viewers who are using the manual traffic exchange. The report illustrates some of the self-perpetuating effects of geotargeting in advertising campaigns.

Because most advertisers target only three or four countries (USA, Canada, UK, and sometimes Australia), people from outside of those countries wind up seeing far fewer ads and do not have as many opportunities to support the advertisers with their purchases or referrals. This in turn tends to steer the advertisers toward ignoring these “rest of the world” countries because they don’t see any traffic, referrals, or revenues coming from these locations.

The imbalance has become severe enough that it has created a traffic bottleneck where members who are targeting the “big spender” countries are not getting enough traffic flow to their sites because there are not enough members from these countries to view all of the pages that are being targeted towards them. The Share Ad Space admin is hoping to even things out by getting some of the advertisers to display ads to a wider range of countries, but it is difficult to tell whether or not there will be many members who will follow this suggestion.

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Rod Baker, owner of the Internet advertising site Share Ad Space, has put forward a potentially significant proposal today concerning the future of his program. The basic idea behind the proposal is to separate the current SAS into a network of individual sites, each with a specialized focus that would cater to a different advertising audience. The possibility of purchasing traffic packages that would allow members to receive 24-hour unique hits across all sites is also being discussed. Interestingly, according to the results of the current poll on the SAS forum, the majority of the membership seems to favor retaining SAS in its present form, so it is unclear whether the proposal will actually be implemented at this point. As usual, the details of the owner’s new idea are republished below:

I was thinking about this today and would like all of your feedback. This won’t happen right away (if we decide its the best way to go) but your opinion and the direction of the site moving forward is on my mind lately.

SAS, technically, is almost 4 different traffic exchanges in one.

My question is, should we split them up?

1. Trade Or No Trade game
2. Memory game
3. Traditional surfer
4. PTP surfer (but may drop this one as its own entity)

Several more features that I would like to bring to the table but feel they may best be served if separate sites are:
1. Paid2BeUnique (as was mentioned in my latest email)
2. Battle Surfer (medieval times where you choose your character: fighter, elf, dwarf, etc and build that character’s abilities, weapons and armor).

I feel if we separate the site into these own entities, new members won’t get overwhelmed with the options in one site, focus on the sites they are truly interested in (whether its one or all of them) and, the most important part, I can then offer upgrades/features that are specific to benefiting THAT particular site theme.

Example: upgrades on the ToNT focus on extra hints, shuffles, etc.
upgrades on the new battle surfer will focus on magic potions, health points, weapon upgrades, etc.
Memory game upgrades could focus on increased credit boxes, etc.

Now, the one truly unique feature in this “family” of sites is that they all SHARE the same advertise page table. That means, regardless of what site you use (one or all) you will still receive UNIQUE hits across the family of sites.

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Okay, I know some of you are probably thinking, “Oh no, not another stupid traffic exchange update!”, but I have been very busy with webmastering issues lately. I have added some new items to the sidebar: 1) You can now subscribe to Karlonia.com in your RSS feed by clicking on the ubiquitous orange chicklet symbol, and 2) I have joined two popular blog carnivals, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. Their widgets have been added to the sidebar, and will hopefully improve traffic flow to the site. Several members of these networks have already added me to their “friends” list, and I am currently responding to their invitations and private messages.

Meanwhile, Royal Surf is finally undergoing the process of changing their jousting tournament game and has released this newsletter update that explains the details of the upcoming changes. In keeping with the medieval theme, I have included a video of scenes from a recent European Renaissance reenactment that displays various aspects of early medieval British life, including blacksmiths, fletchers, and carpenters. The song in the background is called “The Voice” and is performed by an Irish band called Celtic Woman.

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After a long dry spell, Share Ad Space (SAS) has delivered a notable program update, announcing a temporary reduction in both membership upgrades and regular advertising packages. Perhaps more significantly, Admin Rod Baker has hinted that a new paid-to-promote feature is in the works, which represents an exciting development for SAS fans.

For most of the program’s history, the main feature that most SAS members used was the paid-to-promote (PTP) system. It employed a rather Byzantine method of awarding cashable credits based on country tiers, 12-hour unique page views, and a fairly restrictive list of pre-approved sites where PTP pages were allowed to be promoted for credit. Membership upgrades were also available for a relatively low weekly rate, allowing “Pro” or “Elite” members to obtain better manual surfing ratios and earn more cashable credits for each valid page view they sent to the PTP pages.

Unfortunately for then-current members, the whole system had to be scrapped in July 2006 after a lightning strike (along with an unbelievable blunder by a technician at the hosting company that caused the server’s backup files to be erased) irrevocably corrupted most of the program’s database files, prompting Rod Baker to eventually restart SAS from scratch last November. The PTP system disappeared, replaced by relatively cheap advertising credits, some very small random cash awards for using the manual surfer, a “trade or no trade” game, and more recently, a new match game.

If things go smoothly, the new PTP system should be interesting. Unlike the old system, it promises to have no restrictions on where members can promote the pages, and will reportedly offer higher payment rates ranging from $2 to $3 per thousand page views. The main “catches” will be that the page views must be 6-hour system wide uniques, and the new feature (at least initially) will only be available to upgraded members. Admin is hoping that these new features will prompt members to promote the pages outside of the usual traffic exchange and PTR industries, which could bring in an influx of fresh members who may be more receptive to SAS advertisers.

The full text of the latest program update is provided below:

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Another rather comprehensive update was released by Royal Surf today, bringing news of an upcoming game feature, tweaks to surf ratios and bonuses, special awards for advertising and splash page design, and the winners of recent surfing contests.

This time, however, before displaying the text of the update, I will include a little video of some jousting tournament footage that was produced by the Full Tilt jousting troupe from Australia. I know that some of you are arriving at my Royal Surf update pages from searches on keywords like “jousting tournament”, “medieval jousting”, and other similar phrases. This means that you may be experiencing some disappointment upon discovering that the content of these pages is about some traffic exchange that you’ve probably never heard of instead of the real jousting-related information that you were presumably expecting.

If you happen to be one of these readers, then hopefully this video will satisfy some of your curiosity about what medieval jousting performances really looked like. This particular clip was one of the best quality productions available at YouTube on the subject, although there are many others that can be viewed by doing a video search on jousting-related keywords. This particular piece is approximately two minutes long and highlights the various feats that medieval knights performed during the jousting tournaments, including a dramatic double unhorsing scene near the end.

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Currently rated as one of the best performing manual traffic exchanges, EasyHits4U.com has just released their latest newsletter. They are announcing a new surfing contest for October along with some significant expansions of the site’s features that will now be made available to free members. Specifically, it will now be possible for free members to surf without having to have an active site in the rotation, making it possible for us to save up credits and use them later at our discretion.

In another welcome move for credit savers, they have also lifted the forced 50% auto assign requirement, which means that we can now receive one full credit for each site that we view while also saving up to 100% of our advertising potential. The details of both the contest and the feature expansions are explained in the newsletter below.

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Two different traffic exchanges are offering substantial bonuses for frequent surfing on Saturday, September 29. Traffic Pods is running a “power hour” each day from the 29th until October 5 in which there will be a one-hour period when all credits earned from surfing, including the bonus pod points, will be doubled or tripled. The TrafficPods admin has announced that the first bonus hour will begin at 3:00 PM Central Time, or 21:00 GMT on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Royal Surf has also announced some interesting opportunities for bonuses this weekend along with the results of some recent contests. In addition to increasing the bonus link credits that appear on the surfbar after every 20 pages surfed, there will be an opportunity on Saturday to win a free upgrade for one month. The only catch is that the upgrades will only be awarded to members who surf at least 1500 pages for the day, which will mean several hours of surfing. The details of the new Royal Surf promotions are provided below.

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Co-admin Catherine “Lady Cat” Heiter has sent out another update for Royal Surf today. Currently there are daily contests occurring in which every member who has surfed at least 25-100 pages (the precise number is random and is chosen at the end of each day) is entered into a drawing in which the member can win from one to five royal coins. These coins can be saved up and used toward future advertising purchases or upgrade packages in order to defray their cost. With a sufficient number of royal coins, it is possible to obtain free advertising in addition to the usual traffic exchange credits that are earned through surfing activity.

The other major issue that is addressed in the update involves a new captcha system that was recently implemented as an anti-cheat measure to prevent auto-clicking and other forms of traffic exchange fraud. Apparently some members were having problems distinguishing between the capital letter “O” and the number “0″ whenever the turing number verification screen was displayed. The email update says that the capital “O” letters have a dot in the middle of them while the zero does not. However, after surfing about 140 pages earlier today, I noticed that there was an additional distinction that made the difference more obvious- the zeros have a slash through them, making them appear somewhat like the “null set” symbol from mathematics. The letter “O” is wider, more rounded than the zero, and does not contain the slash.

You can read the details of this latest Royal Surf newsletter below:

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Making use of some quasi-medieval language, Royal Surf has released its latest update and is continuing to advertise for upgraded membership sales. Admin Michael Kelly has announced that the weekly jousting tournament is undergoing some changes, and will move from a model based purely on total quantity of surfing to more of a merit-based system in which some elements of strategy are involved. He is promising other upcoming changes that will make the completion of quests more fun and interesting, but has not yet disclosed the details.

The full text of the update is reprinted below. It is rather long and the first part is mostly “sales letter” stuff, but in the last few paragraphs, there are some interesting tidbits regarding the upcoming enhancements to the program.

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