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Paid Autosurfing - A Brief History (part One)
By Jody Molloy, Mon Dec 5th
It would be difficult for anyone to pinpoint exactly when theautosurfing community came to be, however, most trusted andpopular industry sources would probably agree that 2.5 to 3years is about right (up to November 2005). So far, through a rather tumultuous evolution, the paidautosurfing industry has endured more than its' fair share ofridicule from sceptics and "mainstream" advertisers. Infairness, traffic exchanges, at least while in their infancy,would never have proven adequate for any business greater thanan SME (Small-Medium Enterprise) or the affiliate marketingworkforce to utilise as an effective method of marketing. The Industry was created on the idea of providing a service bywhich webmasters could "drive" visitors to their sites and thushelp increase their search engine rankings based on quantity ofvisitors (thanks Alexa). No longer did people have to payexorbitant amounts of money to get listed on Search Engines orpurchase PPC campaigns. Of course, the more alluring thewebsite, the more click-through visitors it will attract.
In theory, this usually translates into a rise in salesproviding the rest of ones' website marketing strategy wasworking effectively (good layout, text rich, audio, etc) becausea visitor actually gets to see what your website looks andsounds like instead of just a description picked up by theengine spiders (bots). It is a much more interactive experienceproviding very real exposure. It works too!....By utilising a variety of different trafficexchanges, we managed to get one of our websites listed by allthe major search engines (Google, Yahoo etc) inside our firstthree months of operation. We're not too sure how this stacks-upagainst other sites we might be competing against, but it wascertainly on our list of twelve month goals. In the beginning there was very much an atmosphere of reservedanticipation. It took only six months or so for one"industry-leading" traffic exchange to amass around 10,000members; while other sites with typically smaller numbers ofmembers fought to gain recognition in the face of what might'velooked like a developing monopoly. Predictably, the spirit of free enterprise, competition andperhaps
a little opportunistic greed, saw some cashed-up membersof the first "proven" paid traffic exchange to obtain the scriptand hosting necessary to open their own paid-traffic exchanges.They were the first to take advantage of the market demand formore opportunities to earn cash for surfing and were largelyresponsible for giving the industry a much needed exposureboost. A wise business manoeuvre, one might say. However, the absence of any formal regulatory or governing body,association or union had left a legal loophole the size of theGrand Canyon. This created a virtual cesspool of scam-likePaid-to-surf webmasters. Some went into business with the fullintention of collecting members' upgrade cash and then vanishingsoon after while others proved to be poorly organised, highlyincompetent and completely devoid of any business managementknowledge, much less experience. The results were most often that the webmaster would becomeincreasingly difficult to contact, much less give his/hermembers the courtesy of an explanation for the silence. Thiswould be followed by an even quieter exit whereby the webmasterwould notify members via email to announce that the site wouldbe offline for "maintenance" or a "server upgrade" and thennever make it back to operations. Some even, after some period of lying low, had the audacity toopen another site, in a brazen attempt to steal again from alargely uninitiated but burgeoning autosurf community. It must've been like "shooting fish in a barrel" for them. However, the vigilant nature of the autosurfing community soonprevailed and the perpetrators were eventually exposed asfraudulent scam operators and their details distributedthroughout a network of legitimate and successful autosurfwebmasters. The problems, loopholes and hidden clauses that virtuallypermits this type of behaviour to occur will be examined in afurther article about Terms of Service. About the author:Jody is co-webmaster of Australian Online Rewards.com, has beensuccessful in paid autosurfing since April 2003 and is active innumerous business networking organisations. Watch for Jodys'articles on his current observations of paid autosurfing in thefuture. Please visit us and join our mailing list forinformation and guidance. http://www.australianonlinerewards.com
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