Okay, you have the perfect website. Everything looks great, the links all work and you’re raring to go! What now?
That’s right — PROMOTION!!!
There are many forms of website promotion, one of which you have already discovered if you’re reading this article – ezine advertising. Right, but don’t limit yourself to a single advertising method. If you enjoy surfing the web and browsing through websites, take advantage of Start Page Exchanges.
What on earth is a Start Page Exchange? The concept behind start pages is pretty simple. You join a “start page exchange”, most of which are free to join. You are given a “surfing” url, which you set as your internet browser home page. In the member section of the start page exchange website, you enter the url of the site you want to promote. Set-up is complete!
Now, every time you open your internet browser, you are opening your start page exchange surfing url. Once you have opened that surfing url, there are certain requirements for the length of time you must view another website before receiving credit (or points) for your view. The start page exchanges I’ve used vary from 10 seconds to 30 seconds. The more websites you view, the more views (or hits) your website will receive.
The number of times you must view other websites to earn enough credits for someone else to view your website is known as the hit ratio or exchange ratio. It is generally expressed like this – 2:1. This means for every TWO websites you view, your website gets ONE view. A hit ratio of 5:1 would require you to view FIVE other websites in order to earn ONE view of your website.
Why aren’t the exchanges all 1:1? Good question! Actually, a few exchanges do offer this, but most exchanges have at least a 2:1 ratio. The extras are used in various ways. That start exchange membership is FREE. You pay nothing at all to promote YOUR website. There are thousands of other FREE members too, but where the start page exchange owners get the funds to offer this FREE service is the extra credits, point or views. Some of the extras are used to offer bonuses to active members. Some of those extras are used to give NEW members a start-up bonus. Some exchanges provide a REFERRAL url, which you can promote to sign-up additional members to earn extra credits.
Oh, so they’re all GIVEN away? No! Some of those extras are SOLD to others who want to promote their sites but don’t have the time or desire to sit around surfing. It’s the sale of points or credits that help finance the start page exchange. With any luck, it also puts a few bucks in their pocket. Hey, we ARE all in business here, so it’s only fair that the providers of these cool services get something in return. Remember, they have to pay someone for at least the hosting of their site, if not for the development, tracking, maintenance, and overhead expenses.
Got it so far?
Step 1: You join the start page exchange for free
Step 2: Set your internet browser home page to the surf url
Step 3: Enter the website you want to promote
Step 4: Surf away in your spare time and earn credits and bonus credits. Step 4a: No time to surf? Buy credits and let others surf away!
Step 5: Promote your referral URL to earn referral credits.
Step 6: Enjoy increased website traffic, sales, sign-ups, etc.
Now the really hard part!…. There are hundreds of start page exchanges and you’ll be tempted to join all of them. First, consider how much time you have to surf. Do you stick to one or can you devote enough time to two or more? Look at the view time requirements. If your website is fast-loading, a 10-second view may be enough, but if your site is feature-rich and slow-loading, most viewers will never see your website. Finally, consider the hit ratio – 2:1 is generally better than 3:1 or 5:1.
Next time I’ll discuss how to easily use multiple Start Page Exchanges and how to promote multiple programs using a single url. In the meantime, here are a few start page exchanges to check out:
Hopefully, you are already taking advantage of some start page exchange programs. Now, I’ll let you in on some ways to use these programs to your very best advantage.
Let’s say you have several opportunities or websites to promote, but your start page exchange only allows you to promote a single url. Many of these programs also limit or disallow use of pop-ups, so you can’t double up that way. Besides, you don’t always have programming control of many affiliate or MLM websites anyhow. So what do you do?
Well, you could create a basic website with descriptions and links for all of your programs then enter the url for your multi-offer website into the start exchange control panel. That is certainly an option for some of us, but remember, you only have 10 to 30 seconds to grab the attention of fellow surfers. Most start page exchangers remain on a page only long enough to get their credits. Unless you can describe each program in a line or two, this simply isn’t very effective for use with start page exchanges. This could be a solution for use with more leisurely visitors, such as those responding to an ezine ad. Again, most people don’t have the time or skills to code such a page.
Don’t worry! There IS a way to deal with this situation, without having to code a website or have ANY technical skills! The first and simplest solution is the webpage rotator. A webpage rotator program allows allows you to enter multiple url’s into a control panel, then you simply set your start page or home page to a single “rotator” url. Each time that rotator url is visited, a different url from your control panel list is displayed. Simpler programs just rotate from one page to the next, while others allow you to prioritize your urls to get more visits to some websites than to others. There are a few start page exchanges that provide rotator functionality for free. This easily resolves your multiple website promotion woes.
The concept of the website rotator can also be applied to use of startpage exchanges. There are several programs which provide a homepage or startpage rotator. You simply enter the surf url for all of your startpage programs into a control panel, set your browser homepage or startpage to the rotator url provided. Each time you open your internet browser, a different startpage surf url is displayed. This allows you to “spread the wealth” across all of your startpage exchanges.
You can also find programs which enable you to open multiple surfing sessions in a single browser window. This lets you rack up points faster by getting multiple views in a single 10 to 30 second time slot.
There are several programs that offer completely automated surfing within their own startpage exchange. Once you define the url to promote, you simply open the surf url and go about your business. Some automated surf programs allow you to enter multiple auto-surf url’s and rotate among them each time you open their automated surf url. Either way, the surfing is hands-free, allowing you to gain website hits with little or no effort.
For the startpage fanatic, how about launching ALL of your startpage programs at once? There are actually several programs which provide a single control panel into which you enter all of your startpage exchange surf urls – or simply your userid. Once defined, you open a single link and all of the startpage programs you defined will launch at once – automatically! This is the ultimate hands-free traffic building experience.
Okay, so what are the pros and cons here?
Well, the rotator is an excellent tool for multi-site promotion….when they are working properly, but that’s true of ANY program you join. Otherwise I don’t see any problems with this for either the website url or for surfing url.
There are distinct advantages to being able to enter ALL of you startpage exchange url’s in one place – forced organization!!! If you have trouble keeping track of your url’s, the multi-program control panel is for you! Many of the programs that offer this feature also provide an automated means for referrals to sign up under you from a single site. This saves a tremendous amount of time, effort and money on downline building. Remember, the more people in your downline, the more traffic YOU earn for doing NOTHING!….
In a world where everyone is in a hurry, who WOULDN’T love totally automated surfing?!……..Well, this is just my opinion, but I think the more people that automate, the less valuable the hits become because fewer people are actually VIEWING the websites. If you just want to make your hit counters look good, that’s fine, but if your purpose is to actually SELL a product or BUILD a downline, you need QUALITY hits. Hey, I’m not saying that EVERYONE using automated surf routines will start-up and walk away, but I suspect there are quite a few people who do just that.
I personally LOVE startpage exchanges. I prefer hands-on hands-down because I get to see other websites. In addition to earning free traffic, I get ideas for my websites, I find all kinds of free stuff, I see all the latest offers and, yes, I occasionally find a program that I really like and I join it. That’s because I’m actually reading the website!!
My purpose here is simply to give you some of the information you need to make an informed decision when choosing startpage exchange programs for your website promotion. There are many other combinations of features being offered. Some programs combine start page exchanges with banner and exit exchanges. It could take months for me to list every program and their features, by which time half the information would be obsolete!! Things change quickly and there are new programs released daily. Take time to research the best program for YOUR use.
For your convenience, I’ll list a few programs in the resource box below. As I stated earlier, though, there are HUNDREDS of programs to choose from. Just hit the search engines and see what you find.
Visit my Business Builders webpage for more traffic generating ideas.
Happy surfing!!!……….
copyright 2002 – Cathy Carlton
Cathy Carlton publishes Carlton’s Corner, a weekly web-based newsletter featuring topics such as internet marketing, website building, e-business, motivational and family issues and now features Steve Pilkington in “Coaches Corner”. You can join Carlton’s Corner by sending a blank email to: join-carltonscorner@pro.netatlantic.com or visit http://www.carltonscorner.com/
