Today I have started a new website called “Traffic Gifts”, a traffic exchange and gift giveaway combined into a single advertising platform to increase website traffic. These are two powerful methods I have used over the last 5 years to build my opt-in list and to start earning a solid income online.

To go in a bit more detail about TrafficGifts, the system allows you to earn points in various ways which include surfing, referring new members and for each upgraded referral. You can even get points for upgrading your account which allows you to place your own gifts on the marketplace and rank them higher by assigning points to them. TrafficGifts takes this one step further and after so many days points are slowly removed from all gifts. This allows the most active users in the system to rank their products high.

If you are looking to grow your list and do it for free or at a very low cost then TrafficGifts is the place you need to be at right now, click here to signup for free.

On Sunday, February 13th, I’ve started the Pre-Launch of the Instant List Empire. The first launch week was huge and I didn’t even find the time to post about it here on my blog.

The Instant List Empire is a combination of a Giveaway Event and a Listbuilder in one program. You can use it to add new subsccribers to your lists by setting up a gift just like you do in a Giveaway Event. The only difference to a Giveaway Event is that your gift at the Instant List Empire will receive new signups for months and even years to come. It’s a never ending Giveaway Event. Next to this automated listbuilding feature you can also post your emails instantly to the inhouse list.

By the time of writing this blog post we have already over 1700 active members onboard and we are growing by over 100 new members a day.

If you haven’t joined the Instant List Empire yet, then do so now. It’s going to be a huge advertising platform that you can use to promote your websites and offers.

Click here to signup for free

Hey Guys,

it’s Listbuilding time…

… we have just started the Pre-Launch of the famous Halloween Giveaway and you can be part of it to add a couple hundred new subscribers to your list.

In 2007 we’ve started the first Halloween JV and since then we have held this huge listbuilding event every year. Now it’s the fourth time that this popular event is going into Pre-Launch.

You can join us, click here

If you’ve never been involved in a Giveaway Event, then do yourself a favour and check it out. Giveaway Events are the easiest way to build your own list, especially if you are just starting out with internet marketing. And… it’s not only about listbuilding… a Giveaway Event is nowadays a huge advertising platform for your business.

This year we are having a Huge Referral Contest again… there are $1000 in prizes that we give away to our top referrers, next to the huge commissions that you earn from upgrades and special offer sales… and promoting such an event is not hard… it’s free to signup… so, you don’t really promote… you show others how they can build their lists… you help them!

Join us today, click here

I’ll see you inside!

Guido Nussbaum

Hey Guys,

I just came back from my 2 weeks vaccation in Bodrum, Turkey. It have been
2 weeks full of sun, fun and party. I’ve been traveling with my best friend,
Sebastian (whom I know since I’ve been not a month old), and we met alot of
nice people in these 2 weeks. So, today I want to share some impressions and
finish this blog post with some thoughts about business (a vaccation can be
very inspiring).

Let’s start with the day we left good old Germany…. we left the bad weather
behind and arrived savely in Turkey being welcomed by sunshine, blue sky and
a nice hotel crew. Our rooms were small and simple but clean and included airconditioning.
The hotel was pretty cool, it included a private beach, beach-bar pool, pool-bar,
2 restaurants, a 24h lobby-bar etc. etc. We booked all-inclusive, so we could
eat and drink as much as we want.

The days were pretty much the same… hanging out at the beach during the day
and party at night. We were not really interested in visiting castles as they
are around every corner here in Germany… so visiting “tourist attractions”
wasn’t on our plan for this holiday. The first 3 days we checked out the party-life
in Bodrum and Gümbet which is located right next to Bodrum. We had some
fun but soon realized that the party in Gümbet was “too much”
for us (great for 18 to 25 year olds) and the big parties in Bodrum were just
too expensive.  So we ended up
having parties in our all-inclusive hotel which turned out to be alot more fun.

We already met several really cool people in the first night at the “disco”
and on the “lobby party” which happened to be celebrated after all
bars but the lobby-bar had closed. Before the holidays were over we’ve become
friends with half of the people in the hotel including the hotel crew. Many
have become very close friends that we’ll meet back soon.

I won’t go into detail here about people, stories etc. … instead I’ll share
some pictures that I’ve taken.

In these 2 weeks I also had some time to read while getting some teint at the
beach. My book of choice was “Think And Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.
I think most of you know this book, for those who don’t, it’s a Must Read if
you are in business. This book has inspired me alot, especially in regards on
business organazation and master mind groups. I came back from holidays whith
lots of new ideas and strategies that I’ll implement into my business. Here
I want to share a simple procedure that anybody can do to get started in business
or to improve the current business. It’s just a short list but if you take your
time to fully understand it, then you’ve understood the business basics.

So here is the strategy / plan:

1.) Come up with an idea that will definately work (can be a new idea or an
improvement for something that already exists)

2.) Write down a definate plan how you turn your idea into reality

3.) Break your definate plan down into detailed step by step procedures

4.) Hire people (specialists) who go through your step by step procedures and
turn them into reality

5.) Create step by step work plans to maintain and grow your businesss

6.) Hire people (specialists) who maintain and grow your business by going
through the step by step work plans

This simple plan includes 2 major “strategies”, the first one is
to break down your ideas and plans into step by step procedures. If you do this,
then your workers will be replaceable… you can hire new people who will know
exactly what to do due to your step by step procedures. The second “strategy”
is to hire people and not to do it yourself. This is the most important business
principle to understand in today’s internet business world. Most people start
out doing everything on their own. This is in my opinion the No. 1 reason why
so many people fail online.

Alright, enough said… here is a smalll selection of the pictures taken.

Me (on the left) and Sebastian (on the right), first day in Bodrum.	A nice view on Bodrum from our hotel.	Close up of Bodrum with the castle in front, from our hotel.
Sebastian and me coming back from shopping in Bodrum.	Nice dinner at the fish restaurant with Liz, Ellen and Sebastian.	Sebastian and the swordfish.
Me with the swordfish (actually we all had swordfish for dinner).	Party at the beach bar in our hotel.	Liz and me at the beach bar.
Ellen and Sebastian at the beach bar.	Ellen, Annemarie, Jacob and Sebastian at the beach bar.	Liz, Annemarie, Ellen, Jacob and Sebastian at the beach bar.
The whole party crowd at the beach bar.	Jacob, Franky, Sebastian, Annemarie and Claire at the beach bar.	“Stairs Party” late night at the lobby of our hotel.

Hey Guys,

just 21 months ago we started the Traffic Witch traffic exchange and by now we have over 50,000 members onboard.

These members will visit your website if you use Traffic Witch

Don’t let anybody tell you that traffic exchanges don’t work… all you need to do is promote a Squeeze Page or a Splash Page that is related to Internet Marketing.

A Splash Page is a very simple website… hard to explain, so let me give you 2 examples:

1.) One of the Traffic Witch Splash Pages: Splash Page 1

2.) One of the Viral Traffic Bar Splash Pages: Splash Page 2

As you can see, both pages don’t require the visitor to scroll in order to take action. They can click on the Ad / Link and a new window opens in a new browser tab. That new window is the main website where they can join the program.

So, in most cases you would use a Splash Page if you are promoting a Membershipsite.

If you are “just” building your list, then you can use a Squeeze Page in traffic exchanges. You don’t need a long text on your website to get a signup to your list. Your Squeeze Page should be about the same size as the Splash Pages above.

A Squeeze Page is the website that has your autoresponder signup form on it. To get the free signup to your list, you need to create some kind of free offer. You can give away an ebook in return for the signup to your list… or you can give away free software, graphics, templates, services etc. … everything that can benefit a Traffic Exchange Surfer.

It’s important that you understand the audience that is using traffic exchanges. That not only goes for traffic exchanges, it works with every source of advertising!

In case of traffic exchanges, the users primarely want to get traffic to their websites. If you understant this little but most important fact, then you’ll know what kind of offers you have to promote on traffic exchanges.

Yes, offers that promise the user more free traffic to his/her website work very well in traffic exchanges… I’d say these offers work best. But there are also other type of offers that work well in traffic exchanges… things like free ebooks about getting traffic, free ebooks about Hot Topics like Squidoo, Web 2.0, SEO etc. but also all things that have to do with How To Make Money Online.

A Big “Secret” Technique: Surf the traffic exchanges for a while… and you’ll see that certain websites appear again and again. You can be sure that if these websites are shown that often, then the owner will know that it converts well. They won’t keep promoting their site in the traffic exchange if it doesn’t produce results. If you keep your eyes open for a while when surfing the traffic exchanges, then you’ll quickly find out what kind of offers work best.

Traffic Exchange advertising is a big part of my business… thousands of my subscribers came from traffic exchange advertising. If you don’t use traffic exchanges, then you are missing out on tons of subscribers for your list or membershipsites.

Here you can find a list of Manual Traffic Exchanges.

Hey Guys,

the last couple of weeks have been amazing… we’ve been testing the Giveaway Manager 3 software on several events.

There has been: Sunny’s JV, The Worldcup JV, The Instant Underground Gifts JV, The IM JV Gifts and currently running are the Social Marketing JV and the Gentle Mentor JV.

All events have been a success and left the competition standing in the dust. Go to Alexa.com and compare the Giveaway Manager 3 events with events that ran on other software… you’ll see what I mean by saying “we left the competition standing in the dust”.

Much of this success is due to the software but also due to “How we run our events”. Every Giveaway Manager 3 owner has been mentored by me personally and I allowed them to copy my style that I used to run huge events for the last 2 years.

Now it’s your turn!

The Giveaway Manager 3 is now available in combination with personal coaching from me. Work with me through Skype and our Members Only Forum to make your own giveaway event a huge success. Inside our members area you’ll find The Live Recording of the Social Marketing JV. I show you onscreen how to install the software, how to setup and prepare the event for maximum success, how to start the pre-launch of your event, how and where to promote your event, how to launch the event and all my secret tricks and strategies that I use to add thousands of subscribers to my list.

There will be only 100 Spots available!

You can get access to our Giveaway Owner Community starting today… until the 100 spots are gone… Giveaway Manager 3 – Click Here

I’ve just opened the Pre-Launch of the Social Marketing Gifts JV.

You are invited to join us as a Contributor and add a couple hundred new subscribers to your list.

Click Here To Signup

For those of you who don’t know what a Giveaway Event is, let me try to explain it in a few words.

A giveaway event is basically a place where several internet marketers create a Team to add new subscribers to their lists.

Every marketer enters a Free Gift into the giveaway event that people can access once the giveaway event opens.

Also, every marketer promotes the giveaway event, that’s how people find their way to the event.

The Social Marketing giveaway event is currently in Pre-Launch, that’s the phase when all the internet marketers signup and add their gifts.

If you read this, you are invited to join us in this Pre-Launch phase.

Be aware that this is not a free-ride… you’ll either have to promote the event or you can upgrade your account to add gifts (and other stuff like banners, special offers and your profile with links to your blog, website, twitter and facebook).

Are you ready to join the Team?

Then signup now, Click Here

I’ll See You Inside!

Guido Nussbaum

PS. Contributors of this event get Early Access to Giveaway Manager 3!

Hey Guys,

it’s been already 2 days ago that I had my first wake-boarding experience at a lake near Cologne and all my muscles are still sored. So, I can’t do sports besides watching the Germany vs. Spain football match, which we unfortunately lost. So no party either today… and I got time to write this blog post.

First of all I want to say Thanks to everybody who has commented on my last post. It was an adventure moving my lists to a new autoresponder company but finally the guys from GVO were very helpful.

I’m currently using 2 Autoresponders as I had already switched the signup forms on my sites to Traffic Wave. Well… I guess that gives me a chance to compare the delivery and signup rates of those 2 autoresponders.

Alright, now that I got this autoresponder problem solved it’s time to focus on other things… things that also have to do with Listbuilding.

Let’s talk about Giveaway Events and the Giveaway Manager 3 software.

Yes, it’s coming!

In one of my previous blog posts I have asked you whether to release the Giveaway Manager 3 software or not. First of all I want to thank you for your comments and opinions, they have helped me to come to a conclusion.

I came to the conclusion that those people who want to run their own giveaway events will do so no matter if I release the software or not. So the argument of flooding the market with new events is only half-true as there are other giveaway event scripts out there.

Second, I came to the conclusion that I won’t sell the software for a one time price. It will be released in combination with a membershipsite, this will be kind of a Master Mind Community. This has 2 advantages: First of all you won’t have to hand out a huge amount of money to start your first event… this way you’ll be in profit much faster. Second, I can concentrate on coaching, support and programming new updates instead of having to keep selling more pieces of the software.

The great thing for you is, that the monthly membership will be very affordable, in fact it will be much lower than most coaching clubs where you just get the coaching but no software… and it will be limited to just 100 people, so that I can even do personal support.

The software is ready and some people who got early access are already running the first events on the Giveaway Manager 3 software. You can find these events at my Giveaway Listing Website. Signup as a contributor for these events to get a feeling of the quality of this software.

Currently I’m recording the installation, setup and promotion of my upcoming Social Marketing Gifts giveaway event for the GM 3 community. Contributors of this event get Early Access to Giveaway Manager 3. The Social Marketing Gifts event will go into Pre-Launch next week, July 13th. I’ll send out an invitation and post it on the blog, so you don’t miss it.

Hey guys,

today I have a very sad story to share… My Aweber Account was suspended and closed and I don’t like to say this… but your account might be at risk as well.

Here is what happened:

I’ve received a support request from one of my customers at Traffic Witch. I’ve pasted the important part of that support request below.

————————
Aweber doesn’t allow me to log in:

Sorry, the account you tried to access is currently unavailable from your IP because of too many requests. If you are the owner of this account, please contact help[at]aweber.com for assistance. Please reference “Web Form Throttle: trafficwitch **ip address removed**” in your support ticket.

Frankly, I’m tired of aweber. They cause too much trouble.
————————

I contacted the Aweber Live Support. I gave them this error message, the Traffic Witch website URL and my Aweber account login as they requested that. It took them a few minutes and then they replied to me that I was violating their Terms Of Service the way I’ve integrated the Aweber form at Traffic Witch.

Well, I told them that this is how all membershipsite scripts integrate Aweber. I haven’t seen any membershipsite script that didn’t do it that way and I’ve tested many of them.

The Aweber Support people didn’t care about other websites and gave me a deadline to remove the Aweber form from Traffic Witch. I was shocked and even speaking to a Supervisor didn’t solve the problem, they say it’s against their TOS to integrate the Aweber form in the php code and pass the subscriber data to Aweber after entering the subscriber data in the membershipsite script database first. I would have to use some kind of Email Parser to do the integration they say.

Well, I took action quickly and switched the form integration of my Traffic Witch site to another autoresponder company before the Aweber Deadline was over. Seems that this didn’t matter… they closed my account without a further warning. They didn’t even ask if I’ve removed the form.

So when I tried to login to Aweber today, this is what I saw:

So, if you are using a membershipsite script that integrates Aweber in the PHP code (and I don’t know of any that do it differently), then you might most likely be violating their TOS and your account could be suspended without any further notice. Your subscribers could be completely gone if you don’t do backups!

Normally I’d suggest you go and contact their support to make sure you are not violating their TOS… but as you can see in my example, exactly this move could get your account closed.

By the way, I’m not the only one that got his Aweber account suspended. Several fellow Traffic Exchange owners had to move to a new autoresponder company as well and some of the big names in the internet marketing industry as well, including Frank Bauer who wrote about this on his blog.

So, make sure you don’t integrate Aweber with any membershipsite script (unless you use their own email parsers)… otherwise you might either get your account suspended or you might run into the problem that your subscribers can’t click on your links due to too many IP requests (don’t ask me how too many requests can be happen, I’m speachless).

Anyways, now I’m a bit out of email business, at least for a while until I’ve imported my lists into a new autoresponder company… which is hopefully soon, so that I can contact my subscribers again. I’ll keep you updated on how I solve this problem.

Let me know what you think and post your comment below.

Guido Nussbaum

Hey Guys,

First of all a Big Thank You to everybody who has supported the Easter JV 2010.

This year’s Easter JV was very special as we tested several new things. The great part about this is that all of these new features helped to make the Easter JV 2010 one of the most successful events ever.

The new Twitter Box was used by at least 10% of our contributors. You can check on Twitter how many tweets were posted if you simply search for the easter jv domain name.

The new Viral Friend Inviter was hopefully a useful tool as well. Unfortunately there is no way that I can track the usage of this tool… or at least I didn’t find a way yet on how to do this.

One big change that we did this year was to only show 1 One Time Offer to member signups. We’ve done this because in past events the data has shown that many member signups stopped the signups process after the first or second OTO when we showed 3 of them. So the switch to only 1 OTO has resulted in a higher signup rate to the gifts listed inside the members area. This was also compared to the numbers from past events.

The last big change that we did this year was adding the Short Term Referral Contests. This was probably the best thing I’ve ever done to a giveaway event because it helped to keep the traffic up over the whole period of the event.

By the way… did somebody say Giveaway Events Are Dead?

I’ve taken a screenshot of the evolution of the giveaway events that I ran. Have a look at the picture below.

Giveaway Event Evolution (opens in new window)

Now that Giveaway Events are getting more and more popular we automatically attract more and more cheaters and people who try to take advantage of our events.

This year it was extreme and chasing cheaters has cost me alot of nerves and time. Unfortunately there is no way to get rid of this problem through security features in the script… cheaters will always find a way no matter if we exclude IP addresses or setup other security barriers. So my strategy is to let them do and to collect data in the database. This way I was able to search for certain patterns to find and suspend the cheaters. But I’m honestly not sure if I caught all.

Alright, let’s get to the fun part of the Easter JV 2010… The Numbers.

- 416 Gifts listed

- Over 9000 Signups

- Over $17,000 in Sales Volume

- Over $9,000 in Commissions and Contest Prizes

Below you can see the winners of our Main Referral Contest. As we already mentioned in our emails, we had to place some restrictions on this Main Referral Contest. We didn’t want to place a certain upgrade rate percentage as a barrier or anything alike, so we chose the simple rule that those who want to qualify for the Main Referral Contest prizes must have at least made some commissions from upgrades or special offer sales or that their contributor signups add gifts themselves to the event or promote the event themselves. Basically we wanted to see some kind of action from the signups.

Some contributors did not qualify for the prices. That does not mean that these people did anything wrong. Below are the final results and the cash prizes have already been paid out. Congratulations to our winners!

Position 1: $400 Abhishek Agarwal

Position 2: $300 Mawardee A.

Position 3: $150 Damian Leon

Position 4: $100 Zech Smith

Position 5: $50 Josh Abbott

A Big Thank You goes to the contributor who had by far the most upgrades, Gary Bacchetti (The Gentle Mentor). There is a reason why Gary has such a high upgrade rate: He teaches people internet marketing, step by step on his computer screen… so people trust and follow him. You can access his training for free, click here (opens in new window)

Alright, today we officially close the Easter JV 2010 but we keep the doors open a bit longer so that the rest-traffic does not get wasted. All gifts will stay listed inside the members area so that current members can still signup for them. The Top 10 gifts stay on our Outside Gifts Listing Page so that people can signup for these throughout the whole year.

Thanks again for supporting the Easter JV 2010!

Feel free to post your comments, suggestions etc. below.

Guido Nussbaum