Is it a little like watching TV Commercials?..or could it become like that?

To get some first hadn experience, the team at Systems Strategists recently participated in some Paid to Click, Traffic Exchange activities, usually late in the evening when we had time to spare. 

Aside  from the benefit of being able to make a couple of bucks, or gaining some credit points which we could use to advertise our sites on Traffice Exchange Portals, we  felt that the experience was pretty much like watching the late night merchandising, infomercials and TV Direct channels.  It got us thinking .... if advertisements on late night TV channels are good for direct marketers, then why not PTC advertisements?

Some Background.

John Hagel and Marc Singer were some of the earliest web visionaries who foresaw this trend.  In their book "Networth" they discussed the "Emerging Role of the Infomediary in the Race for Customer Information".  Businesses need customers to provide information, read information, disseminated information and would have to design incentive systems to pay the customer for their efforts....there is nothing immoral, unethical or fraudulent about these schemes.  It has taken seven years since the book was published in 1999 for such incentives scheme in the form of the "Pay tos"  that we are currently witnessing.

PTC Sites Visited

Real 1:1 Traffic Exchange Ratio. No limits to surf and earn!

These are not recommendations, as we are not yet experts not do we have a criteria for evaluation. After our sessions we began to develop some understanding, about surf ratios, timing and the various conversions formulas points into cash, advertising impressions or hits. Given the multiplicity of variables, we would say that it would not be easy to even for an expert to campare sites. 

In general the sites were selected as they provided an option for free subscription, were mostly easy to enrol in, had good customer service, was easy to use, provided a fairly entertaining and interesting experience...and did fairly well in generating hits to our websites.

The sites listed are all manual exchange iste, ie it requires some click action. We did review a number of automated sites which we will report in greater depth in or next issue.

More Comparisons with Direct TV

With TV one could loll on a sofa in drunken stupor and still be counted as an audience. With PTC there is a need to stay intelligent and make the right clicks and the right time. Occasionally there are even "anti-cheating" quizzes. Scoring credits can be quite addictive as there is always the challenge to earn more in less time.

The automated sites where ads run continuously without manual clicking are probably more like DRTV. The manual scheme with so much viewer involvement may actually be an effective advertising and direct response media.

Are PTC viewers the right traffic?

Are they there mainly because they want to earn cash or points? We found find it hard to believe that they are? It is actually hard work. Our shoulders and lower spines were aching after a couple of sessions of clicking.  The money and points earned are probably inadequate to compensate!  Most of us did find many of the sites presented to be quite interesting, and informational....especially wehn we were interested to look for schemes and ideas to drive traffic to our or our client's site.

Hence we spent quite a few hours not only viewing the continuous flow, but did open up at least 5% of the sites and perhaps entered a free subscription in some 1%.  Our general consensus was that it got us into much more activity than DRTV would have done in the same time period.

DRTV is also different in that it is primarily a one step game.  It drives you to call to make an order.  If you make an enquiry, the TSRs are well trained to get an order from you.

With PTCs, even though some of the copies and headlines are pretty hard sell, the objective is mainly to secure a relationship...a paid conversion is probably some steps away. 

Most of us have since spent less hours viewing PTC ads both because of my body aches and because I have seen most of the ads and it is becoming boring to view them again.

Different levels of PTC participations

There are seemingly opportunities to make big money by building a referral network, such that you would gain credit points even when people in your network (your downline)views websites. It has been recommended that some of us who have become bored viewing the ads should begin this phase.

Bringing more people to a PTC portal would be like selling subscriptions for a magazine.  It's a totally ethical practice, though the multi-level structure of compensation may run afoul of trade regulations or laws in some countries. 

Some of us would be trying this and we would present our experience plus our futher research on PTC in the next quarterly update.

Some Recommendations

For the Vendors we recommend the following:

1. Currently most PTC portals run advertising with no specific subjects or topics. We hope to channels develop for different subjects like it is for exhibitions. Digital programming guides should also be developes to allow surfers to easily switch intelligently between channels.
2. The entertainment quality of games and entertainment provided during breaks or as "cheat-tests" could be improved to provide more thrills and enjoyment
3. Manual clicking should be made easier. In Hover Traffic  ads are rotated through a "mouse-over" rather than a "mouse click".  This really helps!.  Automated viewing is possibly a good feature if some form of required interaction, like a quiz on ads viewed is built in every few minutes.
4. Whilst manual of physical dexterity in moving the mouse is OK, the exercise should not cause strain on the eye. Fonts and backgrounds should be design for easy viewing.
5. Warnings about fatigue should be given and the games during breaks should be design to help surfers in the respect.

For surfers, we would recommend.

1. Be sensible do not overwork yourself...set a sensible time period for rest....and prepare some exercises for breaks if you intend to last a long session.
2. Make sure you have an ergonomically set up work station.
3. Ensure that you have a good anti-virus and anti-spy program loaded in your computer. Some team members noted that when they ran the spy checks, they seem to have more benigned counter and tracking items than usual.  Only one site, (not in the list shown) appears (we could not actually confirm) to have passed on strains of  more malicious maliware
4. Know what you want, cash, exposures, hits, FUN...study the formulas if you are realy serious about achieving some objectives.

Conclusion

Our first encounter makes us beleive there PTC, Traffic Exchanges may provide significant opportunities for direct marketers. In the coming weeks we will

• Continue to participate... varying our time slots
• Study more closely the types of ads and banners used by other advertisers.
• Subscribe for some paid premiums schemes,
• Put up different and varying banners,
• Explore the referral scheme and their effectivenss in building a promotion network.
• Explore more automated sites to resolve our reservations

We will as be reporting on our next phase of learning which would be better researched with the benefit of this initial experience. Do provide us your email address if you wish to receive this.