Startpage Programs Are Hit-Exchanges

If you are familiar with advertising on the Internet, you will certainly have heard about the so-called Viral Traffic Generators or Startpage Programs. What do these expressions mean ?

It is a very easy concept: It makes use of the fact that you can set any website as your start page. So every time you open your browser, you will be automatically forwarded to your favorite web page, you don't have to enter anything.

How You View Other People's Websites

You can set a startpage program as your startpage and a script from this site delivers hits for you. Within a frame, you view other people's websites. With most programs, you have to click on a button to view the next site. You have to stay 20-30 sec. at every site before your account gets credited.

If you sign up with such a service, you have to name a site to which people will be forwarded to, once you've earned credits by viewing other sites. Usually, this will be your main site or the site where you want to sign up new referrals for programs you run.

It is important that you have a members area, where you can login to make some changes to your account e.g. setting another site as your main site.

Which Traffic Generators Should You Sign Up For ?

There are several points which have to be considered when signing up for such a service (in order of importance):

============================================= 1.) Which ratio does the service offer ? =============================================

You should only join programs that give you at least a 3:1 ratio. This means, for every 3 websites you view, you'll get one hit to your own site. Anything less than that takes too long to deliver hits. It goes without saying that a 1:1 ratio is the best you can get.

============================================= 2.) How fast does the service deliver hits back to your site? =============================================

If you have to wait days or weeks before you get the hits delivered which you've earned, it would not make any sense to join such a program. It should not take longer than a few hours to deliver hits to your site.

Be sure to check the statistics of your website often to be able to recognize the speed of the startpage program or if they deliver any hits at all. You have to look in the section "referrer" of your statistics.

============================================= 3.) How many credits do you get from new referrals ? =============================================

Viral Traffic means traffic from you AND from people who join under you. So, if you sign up other people, you get hits delivered from their surf-sessions as well (usually about 10% of the hits they generate).

Multiple levels guarantee that you not only get credits from persons you personally signed up but you'll also get credits from people THEY sign up ! This can be, with some programs, up to 6 levels deep...

============================================= 4.) How many credits do you get for signing up ? =============================================

Many of these programs give you hits for free if you join their service. This is not the most important part but who can resist if they offer you 50 or 100 hits to your site for free, just for joining ?

Does Your Website Sell .... Are You "In The Money" ?

Unless you are using a kind of collecting mechanism to get email addresses by giving away free reports or something of similar value, you will not be "in the money". The topics that work best are somehow related to getting traffic. Because that is why the other site owners are viewing your site. After all, they want to get traffic TO THEIR OWN SITE !

They don't view all these other pages to buy everything they come across. You have to make your best offer and use your best headline to get people responding. And most important, you need a page that loads completely within 10 seconds. And then you have another 10-20 sec. to let them become interested in your offer or they click to the next page to get more credits.

Finally, Too Good To Be True ? Autohits Without Clicking...

There is a "new" startpage program called Autohits (http://autohits.4use.dk). You don't have to click anything to be for- warded to the next page. This means, once you have started, you will be transferred to the first site automatically and the sites change every 20 seconds.

I consider this to be very dangerous because actually, you can start this program, go out for a walk and earn credits without really viewing other people's websites !

You don't even have to use it in the foreground window, you can let it run in the background. But if everyone does so, you'll have no real people watching your site but only computers. You don't have to be active to view the next site, so there's no guarantee that sites will be viewed by real persons.

These credits/hits would be totally worthless, in my opinion. It's a waste of bandwidth. If this new trend continues, startpage programs will have the same effect like posting to FFA-pages : NONE !

5 of the best viral traffic generators concerning usability/ratio are listed below :

1.) Nomorehits : http://www.nomorehits.com/cgi-bin/start.cgi?referrer=Mediaman69 Ratio 2:1 Better than average referral bonuses; very user-friendly

2.) Clicksilo : http://www.clicksilo.com/referrals/info.asp?Agent=greatheadlines Ratio 2:1 50 credits (hits) for joining

3.) Webmasterquest : http://www.webmasterquest.com/join.php?ref=IMS01 Ratio 1:1 5 levels of referral bonuses

4.) HitHarvester : http://www.hitharvester.com/referral.asp?ref=IMS01 Ratio 1:1 Delivers hits very fast, user-friendly surfbar, high referral bonuses

5.) Hitpulse : http://www.hitpulse.com/cgi-bin/start/newuser.cgi?referer=coolrun ner Ratio 2:1 Support for multiple websites

Let them explode the traffic to your site ;-) .