This post was triggered by an email I received today – more on that shortly.

If you use any kind of advertising, you should be tracking. And yes, that applies to you traffic exchange advertisers – especially you!

But unless you design and host your own splash pages, there’s a problem – one that no-one really talks about.

You see if you promote xyz affiliate program using their promotional tools, you can’t track. Everyone says “you gotta track”, no-one tells you you can’t track. At least not without a very different kind of tracker.

The reason is that  every tracker out there (with the exception of 2)  is a hit tracker. That means it tracks hits. So suppose you send 1000 visitors to a splash page. Your hit tracker will tell you, “guess what, you got 1000 hits to your page”.

No shit, Sherlock.

What I want to know is how many people clicked on the splash page. Then I can split test and so on. “Oh, sorry Sir, we’re a lowly hit tracker, we can’t track actions”

What you really want to be able to do is track actions.

That’s why the email triggered this post – it was aimed squarely at traffic exchange users saying they must track. But traffic exchanges have a particular feature – you tell them you want 1000 hits to a specific page and they do it (well, most do). So where’s the value or benefit in a hit tracker that tells you you got 1000 hits to your page?

If you’re promoting a splash page, there’s actually very little use tracking the hits to the splash page – you normally know that. What you want to do is measure of those 1000 visitors, how many clicked through to the next page. So the call to action link on the page needs to be a tracking link. If you design and host your own pages, that’s not a big deal.

But what do you do if you’re promoting an affiliate program using their promotional tools?

The answer is, you use VitalViralPro – one of only two action trackers and the only one that works even if the visitor has javascript turned off!

You see everyone says you should track but what you should really be doing is tracking actions. THAT’s what tells you how effective your campaign is!

TS25 is a great traffic exchange but one can get even better performance if you use it with with a downline builder. As with many traffic exchanges, there’s a real benefit to you if you can get referrals i.e. introduce other team members into TS25. These members are known as your downline or your team.

TS25 has a really powerful feature that makes it different from many of the other traffic exchanges. In many traffic exchanges you can build a downline to earn ‘referral credits’ i.e. you earn a percentage of the credits earned by those members in your downline. This is great if those members in your downline are somewhat active surfers. Each one that isn’t an active surfer isn’t benefiting you.

This is where TS25 is different. With TS25, there is still some benefit to introducing people and I’ll explain why in a moment. Instead of earning referral traffic credits from your downline, you are going to earn traffic credits from a ‘syndicate’ generally (but not necessarily) formed from people that AREN’T in your downline.

Here’s the thing: one can earn the right to be part of a higher (more active) syndicate by doing more personal surfing. surf more sites and your surf points will be compared against all the other members in a ‘points ladder’ to decide which syndicate you will be in. As you keep surfing, you’ll keep popping up to the next higher syndicate (full of similarly active surfers).

By the end of the week, the extra credits you earn will not be those credits from your downline! Your extra credits will be the shared extra credits from the syndicate you worked your way into.

In this unique way, you can leverage your own efforts enormously and you’re not reliant upon the surfing activity (or otherwise) of the people you bring in.

Note there are minor differences depending on whether you’re a paid or free member.

Remember I said that there is some benefit to introducing other members, even though your weekly bonus credits are not worked from them, they’re earned from your syndicate?

When you have a downline, the number of personal referrals you have earns you a ‘starting value’ of credits. This means that even before one starts surfing for the week, you have credits. This makes it easier to get in the higher syndicates with less surfing. So the more people you’ve personally introduced to TS25, the higher up the points ladder you start the week. In time one could be in beginning near the top every week. To make this happen, you need to be using a downline builder.

As with using most traffic exchanges, you need to focus on developing a downline and the best way to do that is by utilising a downline builder like VitalViral with your traffic exchanges.