I’ve had strong opinions about how traffic exchanges should operate for a long time, and I’ve shared some of those opinions loudly and even intemperately.

But of course I never had to worry about putting those opinions into action until I put myself in the hot seat and began running a TE myself. Big Bad Hits is wrapping up its first week, so I guess it’s time to take stock of how those opinions are playing out in practice:

• I’ve always thought that long surf clocks are a waste in the era of tabbed surfing — that they give advertisers a false sense of more eyeball time than they’re really getting, and that rather than “forcing” surfers to pay more attention, they just annoy those surfers. I’m still of that opinion. If I had it to do over again, I might have set the Big Bad Hits surf clock at 7 seconds instead of 6, but it would be a coin flip. So, 6 it was, 6 it is, and 6 it will stay … because you don’t downgrade member benefits, ever.
• I’ve always been a fan of TE owners who take the attitude “if I make a mistake to a surfer’s disadvantage, I correct it and get square with that surfer; if I make a mistake to the surfer’s advantage, no backsies — I eat the mistake and the surfer keeps whatever extra it was he accidentally got.” I’ve already had to face that situation twice this week (my misunderstanding of script features gave several surfers bigger-than-promised bonuses). Haven’t changed my mind.
• One thing I have changed my mind on is the relationship between traffic exchange membership and mass emails to members. While I do dislike it that some TEs send out hype-filled emails to their surfers EVERY DAY, often promoting stuff completely unrelated to the TE itself, I figured that was just a bennie of TE ownership. Fortunately, I had occasion to re-think that opinion, based on my own temporary pranging of the “mass member email” function at Big Bad Hits. It’s fixed now, but we’re not going to use it. Being a member of a TE isn’t the same as inviting the admins to fill your inbox with junk. So, except for actual personal admin emails (email to one member about an account problem or bonus, that kind of thing), Big Bad Hits won’t be sending its members email unless they ask for it by subscribing to an update list (which we will, of course, flog relentlessly). And even those updates won’t be “join my favorite cycler” ads; they’ll be closely tied to what’s actually going on at, or involving, Big Bad Hits. If I want to promote other stuff, I’ll promote it on the TE like everyone else.

And that, friends, is where I’m at right now. Over time I’m sure I’ll run into new situations that make me question my prejudices about how to run a TE … and I’ll change my mind if I see a reason to do so. To those more experienced TE owners with whom I’ve argued in the past, now you get your chances to say “told you so”

OK, well, my wife Tamara is the owner. I’m just the admin. All the glory to her, all the work for me

Anyway, Big Bad Hits is up and running:

Thanks to Robert Honeyman and Snooty of AMCS for the great script work and support, and to my list subscribers for serving as first-day guinea pigs!

Some specs:

• Free members get a 2:1 surf ratio (plus surfing and game bonuses).
• There’s only one upgrade level, and it costs only $2.97 per month. Upgraded members get a 1:1 surf ratio and random referrals.
• ALL  members get a 100 credit bonus for joining (after surfing 50 sites to activate their membership).
• ALL members get a $2 cash bonus for referring a member who upgrades.
• Free members get 5% of their referrals’ surf credit earnings; upgraded members get 10%.
• For badge hunters: We’ve got one ClickTrackProfit badge in rotation. You’ll find it while surfing (but you may have to surf awhile to find it … hehe …).
• Not all of our eventual social hooks are in yet, but members can upload a picture and enter their Facebook and Twitter URLs for display in the surfbar with their pages. Chat? Coming soon!

I think we’ve got a pretty nice little TE set up for your enjoyment, and we’re working to make it better at every opportunity.

Large surf icons (we’re working a script issue to get full display size).

A surf bar that stays in one place instead of jumping around.

A very mildly progressive surf ratio, and a “next day” surf ratio bonus. We’re not really flogging those yet … you’ll hear more about them when we turn the numbers on them UP for special events

Come see us!

I’m usually not a big fan of it, and Patrick Griffin‘s latest blog post is one reason why.

That said, I’m looking into the various options for adding chat to a traffic exchange (hint: Whether I like it or not, many people do).

Anyone got a list of the various apps for that? If so, hit me in the comments!

OK, just a minor “pet peeve” rant.

I’m about to launch a new site (I’m shooting for mid-May, but depending on script modification times and so forth, it may be a little later).

It’s a particular kind of site, and there’s a particular kind of service that would be very useful (almost necessary, in fact) for it.

I just saw an ad for what looks like the bee’s knees. It describes a new offering of exactly the service I need, and the price is so very, very right (a one-time payment of not much more than I was thinking I’d have to pay per month) that I can’t imagine not buying it if it works with the site script I’m using.

But I can’t ask the seller if it works with the script I’m using, because there’s no contact information for the seller.

The ad isn’t a splash page or a banner or a 125 x 125. It’s a full “mini-site” page with a detailed description (a sales letter, essentially), links to a demo, terms of service, etc. But no “contact me” or “got questions?” link anywhere.

The developer is pretty well-known in the industry — enough so that his picture is what caught my eye as I was surfing. I can probably figure out how to get in touch with him, and I probably will. But how many prospective buyers won’t bother? How many easy sales is he missing out on by making it difficult to do so?

Just sayin’ …

As a marketer — and I’m using the term broadly to cover any number of things I’ve sold (political candidates, for example), not just Internet Marketing stuff — I’ve always been what you might call “product-centered.” That is, I try to create of find a strong product/service to promote, and trust that it will sell well on the basis of its own features/benefits.

I’ve got no complaints with how that approach has worked out as far as it goes, but what I’ve learned about personal branding through my increasing involvement in Internet Marketing this last year does cause me to look back a little wistfully at what might have been if I’d worked harder to monetize myself as opposed to this newsletter or that book or the other service.

The indicators were always there. Over the years, some of my best clients have been people who came to me for services I wasn’t selling/promoting, and in some cases hadn’t even thought of until they asked me if I could do that for them. They’d settled on me as a prospective service provider not on the basis of a single product or service I’d been promoting, but from a general impression they had that I could be trusted and would get the job done.

One factor in that situation, obviously, is long-term reputation. If I promote and sell crappy products and services and burn the people who buy from me, I’ll never reach the point where a sizable group of people say to themselves “I want X … hmm, I bet Tom could help me with that” and then come straight to me for what they want.

But I suspect there is a tipping point, and I’ve got that little bit of anecdotal evidence that I’m at or near it (at least in one particular niche), beyond which people are looking a lot more closely at me as the recommender than they are at the product or service itself. If they trust my judgment and character, it’s a big time-saver for them to be able to say “Tom recommends it … I trust him on things like this … sold American.”

That’s a scary place to be. A reputation takes a long time to build, and one bad call — especially if that call brings your personal character into question — can wreck it in a minute. Being in that place, even provisionally and tentatively, means that I have to scrutinize what I’m selling or promoting even more carefully, because there’s no longer just a single sale or a single customer riding on my judgment.

But it’s also a marketing “force multiplier,” and I’d be silly not to embrace it.

So would you.