Are We All Just Advertising to Each Other?

Hello!

I’ve been involved with safelists and traffic exchanges for more than 20 years, and every once in a while I stop and think about what we’re actually doing.

We all want people to look at our advertisements.

So we click other people’s ads to earn credits, which we use to show our ads to people who are clicking to earn credits so they can show their ads to us.

Round and round we go.

It’s like walking into a room full of salespeople where everybody is trying to hand out business cards, but nobody particularly wants to take one.

Everybody’s selling.

But who’s buying?

Seriously. Are we actually advertising to potential customers, or are we just advertising to each other?

And if that’s what we’re doing, why does any of this work?

Let’s Admit Why Most of Us Are Here

I don’t think there’s much mystery about why people use safelists and traffic exchanges.

They’re trying to promote something.

Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, “Boy, I can’t wait to look at 100 advertisements for random affiliate programs today!”

Well, maybe somebody does. I’ve met some pretty enthusiastic surfers over the years.

But I’m willing to bet most people wouldn’t spend nearly as much time looking at advertisements if there weren’t credits involved.

I certainly wouldn’t. I’ve spent plenty of years earning credits myself.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s how these systems are designed to work.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Getting somebody to look at your advertisement because they want credits isn’t the same as getting somebody to look because they’re interested.

That’s a pretty important difference.

So are we all just wasting our time?

I don’t think so.

We’re Not Exactly Strangers

One thing that makes safelists and traffic exchanges interesting is that a lot of us know each other.

Maybe not personally. I’ve never met most of the people I see advertising every day.

But I recognize their names.

I recognize their websites.

I know which programs they’ve been promoting.

And when somebody I’ve seen around for years suddenly starts advertising something new, I notice.

That’s especially true when a new program launches.

You start seeing it everywhere. Familiar advertisers begin promoting it. People get curious. Some join. Others sit back and watch to see what happens.

There’s an entire little community operating underneath all those credits.

And I think that matters.

We’re not necessarily looking at thousands of completely anonymous advertisements. We’re repeatedly encountering people and businesses we’ve seen before.

Familiarity doesn’t automatically create trust. Somebody can become well-known for all the wrong reasons.

But recognition gives an advertisement something that a completely unfamiliar advertiser doesn’t have.

A history. A reputation. A reason for somebody to think, “Hey, what’s this person promoting now?”

That’s not something a traffic counter can easily measure.

Somebody Must Be Paying Attention

I’ve run enough advertising campaigns over the years to know that most visits don’t turn into anything particularly exciting.

But some do.

People sign up. They join mailing lists. They discover new programs. Sometimes they even spend money.

Last July, I ran my Safelist Attention Project through 45 safelists to see whether people were actually paying attention.

Instead of promoting a product, I sent visitors to a page where they could voluntarily click a button confirming they’d noticed it.

After cleaning up the data, I ended up with 8,392 visits and 143 deliberate button clicks.

That’s a 1.70% interaction rate.

Not exactly a number that makes you want to run out and buy a yacht.

But here’s the thing.

Nobody earned any extra credits for clicking that button. They’d already done what they needed to do to get their credits.

Yet 143 times, somebody took that extra step.

Does that mean the other 98.3% weren’t paying attention? Of course not. Some may have read the page and moved on.

But it does tell me that at least some people were doing more than blindly clicking their way through another batch of advertisements.

They were paying attention.

And that’s really all I’m getting at.

People can be clicking for credits and still notice something that interests them.

It happens.

Maybe We’re Advertising to Exactly the Right People

Here’s another possibility.

Maybe advertising to other advertisers isn’t nearly as ridiculous as it sounds.

Think about the things most of us promote.

Safelists. Traffic exchanges. Affiliate programs. Advertising tools. Autoresponders. Lead capture systems.

Who’s the ideal customer for something like that?

Probably somebody who already does online marketing.

And where do you find a concentrated audience of people actively involved in online marketing?

Well…

Safelists and traffic exchanges.

Imagine that.

Of course, this doesn’t mean every offer belongs here, or that every advertiser is going to succeed.

If you’re promoting the same tired opportunity that everybody has already seen 500 times, you’re probably going to have a hard time getting noticed.

But the same thing that makes this audience difficult to advertise to might also make it valuable.

These people understand online marketing. They need advertising. They use marketing tools. And many are always looking for the next interesting program.

Maybe the audience isn’t the problem.

Maybe we’re just not always giving them something worth noticing.

So, Are We All Just Advertising to Each Other?

Yes.

To a considerable extent, I think we probably are.

I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I own advertising sites myself, so I’m certainly part of the system.

Most of us are here to promote something, and the credits are what keep the whole thing moving.

But that doesn’t mean nothing worthwhile happens along the way.

People recognize names. They discover new programs. They follow what other marketers are doing.

They join things. Sometimes they buy things.

Most of the time, they’ll probably just collect their credits and move on. That’s the reality of this kind of advertising.

But every once in a while, something catches their attention.

Maybe the real problem isn’t that we’re advertising to each other.

Maybe it’s that too many of us forget there’s an actual person on the other side of the advertisement.

Someone with interests, problems, preferences, and money to spend.

They just happen to be earning credits while they’re doing it.

And that brings me to one final thought.

If you found this article through a safelist, there’s a pretty good chance you clicked the link because you wanted credits.

Yet here you are.

Reading an article about people clicking advertisements for credits.

There’s something wonderfully ridiculous about that.

And maybe it proves at least a small part of my point.

Yes, we’re advertising to each other. But “each other” isn’t nobody.

Thanks for reading,

Jerry