Arrow Trader 5

Installation Guides
Admin Modules
References

Arrow Trader Core

Installation Guides
Admin Modules
References

Arrow Trader eXtreme V2

Installation Guides
Admin Modules
References

Arrow Trader eXtreme V1

Installation Guides
Admin Modules
References

Arrow Trader Lite 3

Installation Guides
Admin Modules
References

Q&A

Getting started

Search

Getting started

In this example, we'll assume that you're running a website which offers daily updated links to youtube videos about cars. Every day, you take 30-60 minutes to find the best and newest youtube videos, and most of your surfers drop by at least once a day, during their break, to watch some new videos. On your website, there's also a smaller section with random office-humor type of vids. Your site receives approx 10.000 visitors each day, and you're considering starting a youtube channel.

Initiating trades

Your site is a succes, your audience enjoys not having to search for videos on their own every day, and they are loyal to your site. Your daily effort is slowly beginning to show signs of potential financial succes. The amount of traffic that you receive however doesn't grow fast, so you decide start trading traffic to attract new surfers who haven't seen your site before.

The first step - after having installed Arrow Trader - is finding sites like yours. Whenever a site gets a fair amount of traffic, there's somebody else copying that site, so there's always a potential trade partner out there.
Contact the webmaster of the site, and see if he's interested in a link exchange, or even better, a traffic trade. In your Arrow Trader admin, go to "add trade", and fill out the details of your new trade partner. The domain should be his domain, and the url should be the address of the website where you need to send traffic to. Fill out a title in the toplist field, and a description of his site. To get the trade going, set a single force of 20 hits.

Once your trade partner has also added your site to his traffic trade program, the trade is ready to go.

Starting the traffic flow

With the trade ready to go, you'll need to decide how you're going to send traffic to your new trade. There are basically 2 methods;
1) using direct links that point to your trade. Arrow Trader can create & track these links automatically with the toplist module.
2) using blind and trade links; these links go sometimes to the content page (a youtube vid) and sometimes to a trade partner.

Your surfers prefer method 1, because the link they click shows them in advance where they are going.
Method 2 is less popular, because the link they click doesn't neccesarily show them where they are going; they might click on a link that says "new Ferrari 458 dragrace with Audi R8", while the link takes them to your trade partner, and not the actual youtube video.

In our example, we'll use both methods.

Direct links to trade partners
In your Arrow Trader admin, look at the main stats overview, and locate the new trade. In front of it you will find the id number of this trade. Let's say its trade 21.
On your website, there's a block with 3 youtube links. We're going to add a direct link, and a blind link to it.

Old situation

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5_AKjDdqaU">Head2Head: Bugatti Veyron vs Lamborghini </a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UGxbfLh4KE">Evo: Ferrari 458 Italia vs Porsche </a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE_WqdKbTvY">Top Gear: Porsche Carrera GT</a>

which looks like this

Head2Head: Bugatti Veyron vs Lamborghini
Evo: Ferrari 458 Italia vs Porsche
Top Gear: Porsche Carrera GT

New situation

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5_AKjDdqaU">Head2Head: Bugatti Veyron vs Lamborghini </a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UGxbfLh4KE">Evo: Ferrari 458 Italia vs Porsche </a><br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE_WqdKbTvY">Top Gear: Porsche Carrera GT</a>
<a href="/cgi-bin/atc/out.cgi?id=21&u=http://www.carvideos.com/">Visit CarVideos.com for more exotic car vids</a>
<a href="/cgi-bin/atc/out.cgi?s=90&u=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TOFd7RMvqo">KBB: Audi R8 5.2</a>

which looks like this

Head2Head: Bugatti Veyron vs Lamborghini
Evo: Ferrari 458 Italia vs Porsche
Top Gear: Porsche Carrera GT
Visit CarVideos.com for more exotic car vids
KBB: Audi R8 5.2

Notice how in the new situation, there are 2 new links.

The first link shows up with the description "Visit CarVideos.com for more exotic car vids"
When a surfer clicks on this link, Arrow Trader sends the surfer to http://www.carvideos.com, and logs that it has just sent 1 surfer to trade 21.
To surfers, it's very clear that clicking this link will send them to another site with car videos, and not to a youtube page.

The second link shows up with the description "KBB: Audi R8 5.2"
When a surfer clicks this link, he has a 90% chance to be redirected to the youtube video, and a 10% chance to be redirected to a trade partner.
This link is thus blind, it doesn't show where the surfer is going to end up. That's it! With the new links in place, traffic will start flowing to your trades, and new traffic will find it's way from your trade partners back to your website.