Well after reading blogs this week, attending the Friday wrap meeting, I thought this would be a great blog post.  So You Want Your Own Traffic Exchange.

There are certain things that should be considered before you jump into owning your own site and this speaking for a TE Owner that learned alot the hard way.

First of all – the name of your site – it needs to be unique – you need to do some research on a theme, will your domain name be different from the zillion that are already out there, will it be easy to brand you or your theme.  Why would someone join your site vs all the other sites that are already out there?  What are you going to do different so that people will want to join your site? Why are you starting your site?  Do you have a business plan?  Do you have money to invest? These are questions that a person should answer before you even get a domain name.

Next in my book – is how long have you used traffic exchanges, how long have you been surfing.  Do you know the TE language?  What is a framebreaker?  Do you know how to get around in a cpanel? Can you explain to someone what your surf ratio is?  Have you compared memberships on other sites?  Do you know the difference in credits earned and hits delivered?  How well do you write ad copy, know HTML, any designing skills, good public relations person, etc.  I could keep going as when I started I sure did not know the many hats that a person had to wear.

Before you think that traffic exchange owners have it made and are just rolling in money – think again.  It’s very hard work – and something that I didn’t keep in mind is that that the internet is open 365 days a year 24/7.

Yea I know most of you think that things run smoothly because your favorites sites are always there for you BUT believe me things do not happen at a convenient time – they are going to happen on your spouse bday, on your kid’s graduation, your kid’s or grandkid’s wedding day – these are things that you need to consider before you tie yourself down.

The other thing is how techie are you?  Are you going to be able to fix things when your site has problems or will have to hire someone?  I know this is lot of questions but you need to think about all this and more.

I personally have been thru all the above and more and really don’t want to see anyone else go thru all this and not know.   Being a surfer for many years, researching, reading everything I could find  and even doing admin work on TE’s before buying,  I really thought, I was ready and then made one mistake after another – the major one buying an existing TE with the name Zaney Clicks – sure didn’t think that one out – where is the freaking theme for a name like that.

Oh I can laugh about it now but believe me there were many tears shed before I got to this point and alot of “what were you thinking”  BUT by accident a friend of mine found some cats one day flipping up in the air and said he thought of me as they were Zaney looking and now you know the rest of story on why cats rule on Zaney.

The bottom line here is buying a domain, adding hosting and throwing up a script is not the way to launch a traffic exchange.  So you want your own traffic exchange – do your homework, research and planning that it takes and be prepared to put in some very long, long hours OR if you don’t want to do that have a nice bank roll for outsourcing – you are going to need it.

If you are wanting to open your own and would like to get the script that I have then you can just click this LFMTE and be on your way