Paid Autosurfing - A Brief History (part one)

It would be difficult for anyone to pinpoint exactly when the autosurfing community came to be, however, most trusted and popular industry sources would probably agree that 2.5 to 3 years is about right (up to November 2005). So far, through a rather tumultuous evolution, the paid autosurfing industry has endured more than its' fair share of ridicule from sceptics and "mainstream" advertisers. In fairness, traffic exchanges, at least while in their infancy, would never have proven adequate for any business greater than an SME (Small-Medium Enterprise) or the affiliate marketing workforce to utilise as an effective method of marketing. The Industry was created on the idea of providing a service by which webmasters could "drive" visitors to their sites and thus help increase their search engine rankings based on quantity of visitors (thanks Alexa). No longer did people have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get listed on Search Engines or purchase PPC campaigns. Of course, the more alluring the website, the more click-through visitors it will attract. In theory, this usually translates into a rise in sales providing the rest of ones' website marketing strategy was working effectively (good layout, text rich, audio, etc) because a visitor actually gets to see what your website looks and sounds like instead of just a description picked up by the engine spiders (bots). It is a much more interactive experience providing very real exposure. It works too!....By utilising a variety of different traffic exchanges, we managed to get one of our websites listed by all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo etc) inside our first three months of operation. We're not too sure how this stacks-up against other sites we might be competing against, but it was certainly on our list of twelve month goals. In the beginning there was very much an atmosphere of reserved anticipation. It took only six months or so for one "industry-leading" traffic exchange to amass around 10,000 members; while other sites with typically smaller numbers of members fought to gain recognition in the face of what might've looked like a developing monopoly. Predictably, the spirit of free enterprise, competition and perhaps a little opportunistic greed, saw some cashed-up members of the first "proven" paid traffic exchange to obtain the script and hosting necessary to open their own paid-traffic exchanges. They were the first to take advantage of the market demand for more opportunities to earn cash for surfing and were largely responsible for giving the industry a much needed exposure boost. 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 the Grand Canyon. This created a virtual cesspool of scam-like Paid-to-surf webmasters. Some went into business with the full intention of collecting members' upgrade cash and then vanishing soon after while others proved to be poorly organised, highly incompetent and completely devoid of any business management knowledge, much less experience. The results were most often that the webmaster would become increasingly difficult to contact, much less give his/her members the courtesy of an explanation for the silence. This would be followed by an even quieter exit whereby the webmaster would notify members via email to announce that the site would be offline for "maintenance" or a "server upgrade" and then never make it back to operations. Some even, after some period of lying low, had the audacity to open another site, in a brazen attempt to steal again from a largely 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 soon prevailed and the perpetrators were eventually exposed as fraudulent scam operators and their details distributed throughout a network of legitimate and successful autosurf webmasters. The problems, loopholes and hidden clauses that virtually permits this type of behaviour to occur will be examined in a further article about Terms of Service.