A Whole Year has Gone!

Yesterday was my first anniversary on the traffic exchange called Traffic Era. Now, I belong to about 50 traffic exchanges or so, I think, but Traffic Era (or Tera as we normally call it) falls into a class of its own. It is owned by the same people who own TrafficPods, TS25 and Hitpulse. Traffic Era opened last year in January, and was the first of the Logiscape exchanges that featured team surfing with chat. They have team surfing on TS25 but there you are placed in teams, at Tera you request to join a team or you receive an invitation.

Team surfing on the whole is quite good fun. You get to meet a lot of different people from all over the world, and I have found it very interesting to surf with people who have completely different backgrounds. Most people I have surfed with have been very happy to talk about what they see, experience, feel and believe about different things. Also, because a lot of people are very experienced marketers or computer experts, I have learnt a lot from them about how to make money on-line, what not to do, how to sort out a virus on my computer and various other things (not all of which can be mentioned in polite chat!!)

However, there is a flip side to surfing in a team as well. You feel you have to surf, even when there are other things that need to be done. If you do not surf, you may be letting your team down, and they may not win the race. I moved to Spain to enjoy being in the sun and swim in my own little swimming pool, and I guess I spent most of last summer compulsively sitting behind the computer clicking numbers and letting the good weather go to waste. A day lost surfing because of bad connection (happens a lot in this bit of the world) is viewed as a complete disaster. I must admit I have become obsessed with Traffic Era, which for the team may be good, for my family and social life it has at times been less than ideal.

Surfing as a free (or silver) member on Tera is a disaster. The rate for free members is 5:1, why bother. Conversion rates on Tera can also be less than ideal, because most people surfing on teams will click on 11 seconds if they can, so I view Tera more as a semi-autosurf, in that people click to gets points and clocks - and you are really building brand awareness rather than looking for sign ups to programmes. (my personal point of view, I am sure there are lots of people who get loads of sign ups on Tera)

Surfing as an upgraded member is much better, and if you get sufficient loyalty points, you get invited to be a Club member, which gives a nice ratio for your click. Every week you can also sell a certain number of credits for 'logibucks', an imaginary currency which you can use to upgrade yourself either in Tera or one of the other Logiscape exchanges.

Since I joined Traffic Era there have been several changes in the overall set up of the exchange. There are a couple which are very annoying to me personally. One is that the overall limit in personal value that a surfer can contribute to a team is set to 5,000 daily and that the overall team limit for surfing has been capped. The other issue that really does annoy me personally is that Tera does not allow you to help other surfers, either team mates or downline members. You cannot transfer credits, tokens or logibucks. Now, in most traffic exchanges you can encourage your downline members by sending them tokens/credits, and it would also be helpful if you could send them superfluous logibucks as well. But this is no longer allowed at Traffic Era. This is a real shame, because it means that if you sponsor a silver member who surfs well, s/he will either have to spend real money to upgrade or spend months surfing as a silver member to earn sufficient logibucks to upgrade. I think this will eventually discourage silver members, who will leave TrafficEra rather than surf their fingers off to 'keep' the upgrade which their up-line or their team may have bought for them.

If you are not yet a member of Traffic Era you may like to have a look around, you can look around by clicking here , who knows, you may well like it, but warn your family before you join that they may not see so much of you again in future

Fairy Tale Revisited

It seems like my blog entry about the Gremlins has caused some concern on a Traffic Exchange called Traffic Era. One of their team leaders wrote to me, asking if I was referring to their team and telling me he would report the blog because he is taking it personally.

This was my response

Hi

Why would I be referring to your team? I have not even said which Traffic Exchange I am referring to, it is a fairy tale.

Once upon a time I surfed in a team that was highly successful because we had a computer wizard who put our team URLs in his rotator and we had a huge referral pv, so we ruled the exchange. However, that was against the rules of that exchange and a couple of our team members got suspended and we had to promise never to do this again, which we did.

On that traffic exchange there is a rule against advertising someone else's referral url.

If your team are doing that, then of course the fairy tale could apply to your team, if they are not doing it then you have nothing to worry about. So I don't understand why you think I am referring to your team, surely you are not putting your referral URLs into a rotator?

Anyway, thanks for reading the blog

Louise

Truly strange when fiction becomes more real than fact. However, as they say in England, if the cap fits, wear it

The Irreverent Fridge Magnet

Good morning Gremlins, still not made it to number one last week despite your cheating :)) heheh

Someone sent me a fridge magnet, which I want to share with you because I like it. It is called

Sh*t Happens

Taoism
Sh*t happens

Buddhism
If sh*t happens, it isn't really sh*t

Hinduism
This sh*t has happened before

Islam
If sh*t happens it is the will of Allah

Catholicism
Sh*t happens because you deserve it

Protestantism
Let sh*t happen to somebody else

Judaism
Why does shit always happen to us?

My current attitude is 'maybe the sh*t could happen to the Gremlins this week'. Maybe, just maybe, the Sleeping Giant will wake up and realize what is happening. Then again, maybe he won't and we will all have to put up with their cheating sh*t for another week.

Jade dies

Nice to see that even with all their cheating, Gremlins still have not made it to the top of the tree.



The UK ex-patriate community today is talking mainly about the death of Jade Goody. There are mixed opinions about whether she was a 'good' or 'bad' thing. Some people are reviling her because she allegedly sold photos of her wedding, when she was clearly already dying, for a huge amount of money.

Jade originally acquired 'notoriety' after being a contestant on the Big Brother television show in the UK. She was known for being gobby and outspoken, arguing incessantly and not knowing very much about anything. Although she did not win the Big Brother contest, she gained instant fame and was invited on many tv programmes and had her own tv show for a while. She made good use of the fame that came with being on Big Brother, and is probably the one 'celebrity' I can name from that show (which I have never watched).

For other people Jade was a role model. She came from a working class family, admitted herself that she was rude and argumentative, but she 'did good'. She got her fame, made loads of money, spent some of it wisely, and was never out of the limelight after she appeared on Big Brother. She was accused of being a racist when she had a set-to with an Indian actress in another 'reality tv show' but ended up being friends with this actress,spent time in India, got involved in charity projects there and later said she was not racist, she would argue aggressively with anyone regardless of skin colour.

Whatever the 'truth' about Jade may be, she was endlessly fascinating and irritating (sometimes both, sometimes just one or the other) for a huge number of people. She received the diagnosis of cervical cancer whilst she was in India. After that time she was never out of the news. She said she was not scared of dying, and was again criticised for allowing the press to watch her every move. She married her boyfriend in a lavish ceremony, and sold the right for the photos for a huge sum of money. Again,she was criticised for that. She herself said she sold the rights so that her two sons (from a previous relationship) would not have to have the same poverty stricken miserable childhood that she had.

The good Jade did, she may have done unwittingly. As a consequence of her diagnosis of cervical cancer, the number of young women attending for cervical smears has increased dramatically in the UK. The other good thing is that donations to cancer charities have increased.

Jade became famous because of 'us'. We bought the magazines that contained her pictures, we watched her tv appearances, and we talked about her. Anything about Jade Goody would sell. She did not hate that, she used it, and that is clever. She may not have been academically bright, in fact, her general knowledge was appalling, but she was shrewd, and she has provided for her children. In the end Jade's fame says more about us than about her.

It seems a shame to have to die on this day though, since this is Mothering Sunday in UK, and she had said she hoped to be able to spend one last Mothering Sunday with her children. It was not to be.

So goodbye Jade, gobby, argumentative, aggressive, shrewd, mother, funny at times, irritating as hell at other times, maybe we should just say that you were an ordinary person who got thrown into the limelight by accident, and made good use of all the consequences of that.

New service offered by a friend of mine

I am having a break from surfing much this week, as I have friends from England staying and we have been visiting some of the local sites of beauty. Sad to see that the Gremlins are still cheating their way to the top (see previous entry).

On a more positive note however, my good friend John is now offering a free spell-checking service for those wanting to post blogs or websites. He and I have always had a good time whilst surfing together, observing some of the more obvious errors in websites and blogs. You can find his log here go visit it and submit your site to his professional scrutiny - do not forget, it is FREE.

One of the things that used to make me laugh most was a hover-surfing site that proudly proclaimed they now had No Click Manuel surfing. I had an immediate vision of an old British sit-com called 'Fawlty Towers' which featured a Spanish waiter called Manuel. Poor Manuel not only did not have to click, he was obviously having to surf 24 hours a day too :) Unfortunately, the traffic exchange that advertised this has now changed its advertising - thus depriving me of a little laugh.

Other things that made me laugh were that I could earn a 'substatial' income, this matrix was 'defently one to join' and how would I like to have an 'eye-earn cling-on'. Bring that last one on for the fans of StarTrek.

More obvious faults were things like 'what could be easier/better then' (than) and fed up of/from, when it should be fed up with.

There are many other examples. Some of them obvious, some not so clear. Some of them are just differences between UK English and US English, as in humour -v- humor, but that is just spelling relating to country differences.

I guess it would be better if things were written properly, but I have to admit that the sites that made me laugh are also the sites whose names I remember, therefore there might be something to be said for making the occasional spelling error in order to be memorable.

If you do not want to be memorable for that reason, and you are not sure about your spelling then I would heartily recommend you contact John on his link above.

I did and he has compeetly fetted this blog and fownd it to be fre of any mistakens.

The Cheating Gremlins at the Traffic Exchange

A Modern Day Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a team of surfers, let's call them the Gremlins. They surfed together on a traffic exchange and they were quite nice really. But one day they became greedy. They could not win enough points just doing things in an honest way, so they started to cheat. There was one Gremlin who had a lot of very expensive equipment in his laboratory - of which he was so proud that he even wrote about it to a member of another team and said

'My secret to getting good PV is by running a 64-bit system, and running 14 autosurfs 24/7 in Internet Explorer x64 - I max out my ref PV within 6 hours every day'

Well of course the other Gremlins wanted to do that too, so they asked him to help them with their ref pv, and since that meant that as a team they would win more points, he was only too happy to help his team mates. He even wrote to the Traffic Exchange and asked them if they would be able to spot such a scam, and they said they probably would not. He then advertised this on the Traffic Exchange, because he wanted everyone to know how clever he and his team were.

What the little Gremlins did not realise is that every other team on that Exchange knew exactly what the Gremlins were doing and that one day the sleeping Giant (which is the Support Team of that Exchange) would wake up and probably eat up all the little cheating Gremlins.

And a good time was had by all and they all lived happily ever after...

You have to FEEL it

Apparently, you can have what you want in this life, as long as you FEEL it. This applies not only on a personal level, but also on the level of groups of people all wanting the same thing, and actively feeling that whatever it is they wish has already happened. So says Gregg Braden, author of, amongst others, Fractal Time, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief, The Science of Miracles and the Divine Matrix.

Braden is a scientist who has spent a large part of his life travelling and studying in remote mountain villages in different parts of the world, to look for other civilizations' 'timeless secrets'. His main thesis is that there is a direct correlation between our thoughts and 'events' in the world. This sounds a bit like Louise Hay and the film The Secret, about manifesting what it is you want. But Braden goes a step further. According to him you can carry on wanting all you like, and the Universe (or Divine Matrix) will allow you to carry on wanting. Almost as if it is saying 'how nice that you want that, you can continue wanting that'. Instead Braden says you have to act as if you already have what you want, feel the gratitude and happiness you would feel if you already had it and then give thanks.

He states that the heart is the strongest centre of electrical impulse in the body (not the brain) and that if therefore the 'feeling' in the heart is involved in the imagining of what it is you want, then the message to the Divine Matrix becomes much stronger, rather than when you just repeat affirmations in the brain.

I am not so sure that the physical heart really is the seat of emotion, and there are plenty of other criticisms that can be levelled at his theory, but I found it an interesting idea anyway, and one that maybe would be worth practising for a while.

A good introduction to his ideas can be found here

Hope you enjoy it, I found it thought provoking but remain to be convinced. O well, keep on practising I guess - what is that I see,... my new car parked outside the house ?