The Nexus Connection

A very active member of the traffic exchange community unexpectedly passed away last week.

Pat Grilliot was a warm and giving person who used traffic exchanges and safelists to build herself a list that made her a tidy monthly affiliate income. She had a generous spirit. She was always available to lend a helping hand wherever it was needed. She dedicated her all to everything she did. She will be greatly missed, especially by me because she was one of my best friends.

Pat’s family asked for help in settling her online affairs. I told them that they should cancel all of Pat’s active payment subscriptions. I suggested that they start at PayPal and Clickbank. But when it came to getting into the accounts, I can’t help there. Even with the request password function, if they don’t have the password for the email accounts, they’re stuck.

This unfortunate event should serve as a reminder to all of us to leave instructions on gaining access to our online accounts, especially the payment processors. Keep a list of your active subscriptions and how to cancel them. It’s a good thing to have for yourself for bookkeeping purposes. And it will really help out whoever settles your affairs.

Hug your loved ones today, and tell them what they mean to you. Tomorrow is not a guarantee for any of us.

The FTC has come out with new guidelines that can effect how all marketers use endorsements and testimonials. Simply adding the disclaimer “Results not typical” will no longer save your butt.

You can go directly to the FTC and read the October 5th release notice for yourself. Personally, that page was a bit dry for me and it gave me a headache.

I got what I needed to know from Frank Kern’s Mass Control blog. He breaks it down into plain English that even I can understand. He even made it entertaining!

Read the blog entry from Frank Kern on the FTC guidelines on use of endorsements and testimonials.

Like just about everybody else, I’ve had to tighten my financial belt. For awhile, I didn’t even look at anything that wasn’t free. Well now I am looking at offers again. I found one to improve my business with 17 different reports on various techniques. 17 reports!! and the cost … a mere $17. Guess what? I passed.

The sales copy was good. It said all the right things. Just $1 per report. Out of 17 reports, there HAD to be something there for me to learn. And who can’t afford $17 to skyrocket their business? Such a tiny investment for a huge return.

There probably is a lot in those reports that I don’t know. But at a buck per report, I figure I can get the same information from Google on my own. I’ve been online long enough to do that much by myself. For me, the price is right, but the value didn’t come across.

Think I’ll go look research “how to price your product or service” …

I am pleased as punch to report that yesterday was a stellar day for surfing at Nexus Exchange. The number of hits to sites in rotation skyrocketed over 300% compared to the day before. My members absolutely ROCK!

What caused this amazing jump in activity? I sent out an email, which I have been know to do from time to time. But yesterday surpassed even days during the recent weekend promotion for which I did email a couple of times.

Maybe it was what was IN the email message. I simply wanted to remind members to assign their credits so that their sites will be seen in rotation. Maybe it was the helpful advice on how to use the exchange.

Maybe it was the free stuff I included in the email. I included a link to a rebranded ebook, so members could get a copy without registering their email address on another list. I also pointed out where in the members area they could find a free download on what I consider need-to-know information, again, without need for giving up an email address. Maybe they liked that.

Or it could have been the old fashioned surf incentives: guaranteed bonus credits and increased view ratio for free members. But I do that a lot.

I would love to figure out what exactly in yesterday’s email actually made people login and surf like they did. The only way to do it is to test. And the only way to test is to change things one thing at a time in the coming emails.

If you don’t test, you don’t know what works, and you can be spinning your wheels forever. Knowing what works for you is what will get you where you want to go.

It’s February, the shortest month of the year. Not much time to procrastinate, so let’s get moving!

TODAY: Freeway members are earning DOUBLE the normal amount of credits for surfing. Upgraded members can claim their February monthly credits and impressions. So EVERYBODY needs to login to their Nexus Exchange account, get your credits, and assign them to your campaigns.

Credits look great in your account, but they don’t do you any good unless they are assigned to campaigns. YOU are in full control of your advertising at Nexus Exchange. You set up auto-assign to distribute the credits that you earn as you surf. You assign all bonus credits claimed and credits that you earn by referring new members and showing your referral pages.

Speaking of control, you also control your payments to us or any other traffic exchange. When you upgrade your membership, you login to your payment processor and setup a subscription. YOU give your payment processor permission to pay your monthly payments. When you want to downgrade your membership, YOU must login to your payment processor and CANCEL your subscription. We at Nexus Exchange, and admin at any other traffic exchange for that matter, do NOT have access to your payment processor account. Think about it. If program owners had that power, wouldn’t we just upgrade everybody, move to the Bahamas, and live on the beach for the rest of our lives?

Last paragraph make absolutely no sense whatsoever? That’s okay, I’m used to hearing that. Learn all about online payments from Sunny Suggs. I love her ebooks. They have pictures! She includes screenshots with arrows and asterisks and explanations of what you should take note of and know. I’m a visual learner. I need to take written paragraphs and translate them into pictures and diagrams to fully understand what is being said. Sunny does all that for me in her ebooks. It can’t get any more simple than that!

Okay everybody? Let’s bust a move!!

MOVING! I almost forgot. We are moving servers this week. To better serve our members, we are moving our dedicated server hosting to ZootHost where traffic exchange hosting is a specialty. We will send out an email to the members when the move occurs. All grandfathered Gold members of Nexus Exchange who have domains hosted on our dedicated server, watch your email inbox for a personal email from me with the new nameservers.