Looking for An Effective Text Ad Exchange?

This article is written for the purpose of helping online marketers find effective ad exchanges that will bring them results. Keep in mind these are my opinions gleaned from my experiences.

I am admin of four ad exchanges, and each one was built slowly and created with effective advertising in mind. I did not expect to make any money from them at first, and I didn't! I did make one huge mistake on my first ad exchange, and that was giving away 10 Free solo ads to the first 500 members. Sounds like a good deal, doesn't it? But, what happens is, you have the potential of having 500 solo ads in the approval queue at once That is 5,000 ads in the system... WOW!)! I learned the hard way, but was able to recover and get the site on track. I got into a bind, and to get solo ads out, had to send them out every 30 minutes for several days. The other option was to make each advertiser wait no less than 3 weeks for their ad to go out.

When you submit a solo ad, you should expect it to take up to 5 days for a membership of 500 and up, and much less for a membership of 500 or less. I joined a site a few months ago that was doing the same, giving away 10 solo ads to all new members. I submitted a solo ad (at the time there were about 300 members on the site), and waited 4 weeks for it to be sent. Needless to say, that campaign was over. I am keeping the faith in this site, as I have been watching and I think they will recover as I did. However, I won't even join a site giving away or even selling too many ads now.

The purpose of solo ads is to send an effective message. That message becomes more effective when it is:

a. Sent out by itself (at least an hour or more apart from the next solo ad). I belong to a lot of sites, and some of them send me up to 15 solo ads all at once, and then do the same thing a few hous later.

b. Sent out amongst a group of no more than 12 in a 24 hour period. If more than that are sent out in a day,. it is about as effective as a safelist credit mailer. I do admit that I have had to up my solos to once an hour at times to get caught up, but for the most part, we leave the sending an every 2 hours. In addition, those ads should be at least an hour apart!

As the script becomes affordable and more people are seeing the ad exchange business as a profitable one, a distressing trend is happening. The competition has become quite fierce, and many new ad exchanges are offering very enticing deals. I have seen a LOT of them offering upward of 8 solo ads to the first x number of members (I wish I could tell them how that will turn out)! I even saw one deal for 520 Solo Ads for a pro upgrade. What happens in these cases? The solo ads have completely lost their effectiveness and it is now in the same category as a credit mailer in a safelist. I have no problem with competition, it actually keeps me on my toes. But what I do see happening is members abandoning good exchanges and grabbing up the huge amounts of ads. "Why advertise on the other site when I have so many free ads here?" "Why work to earn a solo, etc. when I have all these free ones to use for an eternity?"

WHY? Because essentially, we want our ads to be EFFECTIVE!

How Do I Know if an Ad Exchange is Effective?

Follow these guidelines and you will get your ads read!

1. Member count: A higher membership does not necessarily mean the exchange is responsive, although it is likely to bring you more returns. There is nothing wrong with joining a site with a smaller membership, just keep an eye on it for growth. We all have to start somewhere! You can check out a site's traffic rankings on Alexa. A site with a membership at or near 1000 would hopefully have an alexa ranking of 200,000 or lower. The lower the number, the more traffic the site gets.

2. Check Your clicks! After your solo ad goes out, you can go to your advertising section and it will tell you how many times your ad was read. You can also see your responses to traffic links, banners, and text ads. Do NOT expect everyone on the site to read your message, especially these days when solo ads have become "grouped ads" in a lot of cases. You should hope for at least 10% of the membership to have clicked your solo ad. I sent out an ad once on a site with 3000 members and got 20 clicks. I tried again, the next one got 30. This sends me the message that the site is not very responsive. I had to work hard to get those solos, and I know I would never buy any there for that kind of return.

3. How Many solo Ads Do You get from the Site Each Day? Sometimes, sites with huge memberships seem to send me only a few solo ads in an entire week. This sends me the message that it is too difficult to earn ads with points on that site. To be honest, you should be able to earn enough points for a solo ads in a few weeks or a month at most. If you are still miles away in points after a month, and you have been clicking your heart out, that is not a good sign. If it is impossible to earn an ad with points, why would members even bother to click your ads? If the goal is to get members to buy them, it doesn't work for me. I will buy ads from a site where I have the chance to earn with points. If the site is effective, I will buy the ads too.

On the other hand, if you are getting swamped with solo ads from a site daily, the ads aren't read as much either. Again, on a personal note, if I receive 10 ads in a row within a 2 minute period from a site, I don't read them all. Even when my solo ad queue on my site hits 50, I wait an hour between sending ads.

4. How Long does it Take for Your solo Ad to be Sent?

On a site with 1000 plus membership, you could reasonably be waiting up to 12 days, so plan ahead. A very effective site will get your ad out in 5 days or less. That is what I strive for! I do belong to a site with nerly 6000 members, and I know I will have to wait 2 weeks for my ad. But, it IS 5000 members! And I always get a 20% click return on my ads, so I plan in advance. If you submit a solo ad on a site with around 400-500 members, you really shouldn't be waiting more than a few days.

5. Does the Admin Keep in Contact With His/Her Members?

You would hope to haer about updates, promos, specials, and things from your admin. I try to offer my members some type of promotion on a regular basis to keep them active, without "giving away the farm." If you get admin emails from a site, at least in my opinion, it sends the message that the admin cares about all of the members.

6. Is the Site Promoted?

Are there referral contests? dDes the admin promote the site? Do you see continual growth? Membership does not have to skyrocket, slow is actually better. A standstill for over a month may be of more concern. A good admin provides incentives for their members to promote the site. I am finding that one of my sites has come to a temporay standstill, so I am looking for ways to bring it back. This does happen, the important thing is, it should start to come back again.

7. Are Traffic Links, Banners, and Text Ads Posted? You should see a good number and variety of text ads, banners, and traffic links to click and read for points. A lack of them will not help you earn points!

With all that said, I will keep a list of 10 Effective Ad Exchanges running here, and change it weekly.

Here are my top 10 for the week of October 12: These sites all have a high membership, along with great traffic ratings. There are many more, I will just try to keep the list at 10 each week. Tomorrow, I will be posting some new Ad Exchanges that are worth joining!

Maximum Profits

My Free Safelist

The List Alert

The Little Guy

My Traffic Builder

Text Ads R Us

My Free Text Ads

Simple Ad Exchange

Traffic Speedway

Pegasus Text Ads

PS: Solo Ads Only has Pretty High Traffic rank too!