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.