Yes, here I finally am with the whole week’s worth of Traffic Exchange Live updates! This week has just been a real whirlwind for me with tons of stuff needing to get done (much of which didn’t get done anyway) and a sore throat for a couple of days, which had me sleeping more than usual (and being late to TE Live two days in a row). I guess it’s just been one of those weeks!

We were Jon-less a few days this week, but I still have plenty of notes from all four days, so let’s take a look at what all happened on the TE Live front this week. Here goes…

A Whole Week’s Worth (Almost) of Traffic Exchange Live (Monday thru Thursday):

• We had all three hosts on Tuesday – Jon Olson, Tim Linden, and John Guanzon – but were without Jon Wednesday and Thursday since he had to drive to Edmonton to take his kid back, and house hunt a little while there (apparently, however, he spent most of his time in the IKEA store, I’m told).
• Jon said that every Internet marketing office must have hot sauce, and showed us his.

• Canada is the greatest hockey nation on earth (per Jon).
• Jon: “I love all you American people, but if you guys had won yesterday, I would have cussed you all.”
• Wanda Robinson was up against Jon in I Love Hits‘ new bracket surfing on Monday, and was already up to 385 pages at TE Live time.
• Tim got pulled over by the cops three doors down from his house for having expired registration. He was especially unhappy about this because his neighbors don’t talk to him now, and now they watched him get pulled over on their street.
• Discussion and general consensus in the room that most all of us get nervous whenever having to deal with cops, even when we haven’t done anything wrong – Jon, Winter Perkins, Randy Ritter and myself all agreed, as well as others in the room. Ian Bakewell gave the room a link to a related video.
• More discussion of the Wanda vs. Jon matchup in bracket surfing.
• Of course it had to be pointed out that Jon was getting beaten by a girl.
• Jon was up at 9:30 am on Monday morning and no, he wasn’t sick.
• Ian asked Jon not to promote Affiliate Jumpstart anymore. (At the time, they were currently tied as JVs.) Heh. :-)
• Playstation Online was having issues. Jon didn’t have to worry about that because he’s got Xbox.
• Jon went over to bother EasyHits4U again. He asked them if they were surfing for pennies, and did they want to surf for a Slap Chop.
• At least Google can’t do anything about Jon’s daily harassment of EasyHits4U surfers.
• One angry EasyHits4U surfer proclaimed that they make “500 grand a month” and were only 18 years old.
• An anonymous UStreamer asked for tips for promoting a new TE. The response from most everyone in the room was to get their name out there, and get out and be seen.
• Wanda was staying about 100 pages ahead of Jon in bracket surfing and asked him if he wanted her to take a nap. Jon: “Yeah, take a nap for about 12 hours.”
• Jon got fax spam from the cancer society, which perturbed him because he said he would have donated to them anyway, but now here they were fax spamming him.
• Jon proclaimed John Guanzon “our resident Rico Suave” and the “Thrilla from Manila”.
• Jon sang the New Kids on the Block’s “Step by Step”.
• Jon’s son visited on cam for a minute and said hi, wearing a new San Jose Sharks jersey. Jon said he tried to convince him to stay with the Oilers but now he loves the Sharks.
• Jon was having problems dealing with his sites in ThumbVu because the difficulties he was having were veering a little too close to the techy side of things. John helped him out live.
• John burped.
• Jon announced he wouldn’t be at TE Live several days this week, since he was going to Edmonton.
• On Tuesday’s TE Live, Tim referenced his getting pulled over again from the day before. They are leasing the car and turns out the check for the registration was sent in, but was never cashed. He’s a good example of why you should never lease.
• There was an empty supersize Pop Tarts box in Tim’s office. Tim asked his eldest daughter why. Her response: “Because.”
• The littlest Mini-Tim brought in a gardening catalog for her dad. Tim doesn’t know why they get this catalog.
• Tim asked his opponent that day in I Love Hits’ bracket surfing how many credits it would take to buy him off.
• Reference to the film Silence of the Lambs was made in the room. Tim said that movie creeped him out on TV as a kid and he didn’t know why his mom let him watch it. It might not be that scary now, though, he admitted.
• Most in the room agreed that Asian, French and German horror films were usually very scary.
• Tim had a conversation on cam with one of the Mini-Tims.
• A little later, Tim shut his office door and it swung right back open with the littlest Mini-Tim standing there holding an upside-down Barbie (though it’s right side up in this pic).

• The littlest Mini-Tim got in her dad’s lap for a bit and chewed on Barbie’s foot.
• Discussion about the pending New Baby Guanzon. Tim talked about his wife’s pregnancies and especially the first birth. At some point while waiting, Tim went to Dunkin Donuts and said the people there probably though he was extremely excited about his coffee.
• For the second birth, when his wife was in labor, the midwife hit the red button and the room immediately filled with hospital staff and freaked Tim out, who didn’t know what was going on.
• Discussion of Google prestige in the room.
• Google keeps a team of doodlers on hand just to design for the holidays.
• Tim said he can’t find the time. The time wasn’t found.
• Then Tim showed us his clock, which said 4:04 (i.e., 404 Not Found).
• Winter wants a “Talk nerdy to me” t-shirt.
• Tim showed us a photo from his RI Photo site of the Galilee Bird Sanctuary.
• Jerry Iannucci wanted to know where the birds were.
• John: “There are no birds in your sanctuary.”
• Ace programmer Austin Hallock, who totally rocks, joined on cam several days of TE Live this week.

• I was late on Wednesday and especially Thursday so I missed quite a bit of Thursday, but I’m told among the things I missed was “The Log Song”.
• I also missed a cam tour of Austin’s new apartment, but everyone else got to see it.
• I’m told they also got to see Austin’s vacuum. (Editor’s Note: On Friday’s edition of TE Live, there was mention of “Austin’s suspicious vacuum”. But since I didn’t see the vacuum in question I have no idea at this time why it’s suspicious.)
• There have been lots of vacuums featured on TE Live, including John’s, which was a prominent part of TE Live for a month or so after he got kicked out of his office to make room for the new baby’s nursery.
• Apparently vacuums are popular on video here at TE Live.
• Discussion in the room, initially about Internet marketing in general, turned to Donald Trump and the fact that he is selling mattresses now and involved in a healthcare MLM.
• Diane Merriam waited on Donald Trump once when she worked at Harrah’s. He was an average tipper.
• I waited on two of the New Kids on the Block (Jordan and Donnie) once many, many years ago back when I worked at a record store and they were in town for a concert. They were really rude and surly and basically total jerks.
• Diane said Sonny and Cher were the worst tippers of any celebrities she waited on.
• Discussion in the room about celebrities hiring people to treat them like “real people”. The motto: “Guaranteed to treat you like crap or your money back.”
• Tim said he was leaving and suddenly disconnected. John: “You still got two minutes.”
• GIVEAWAYS: No giveaways this week.
• I CALL YOU OUT ABOVE, YOU GET LINKAGE: Wanda Robinson, Seamless Web Solutions (Winter Perkins), Top Flight Traffic (Randy Ritter), Easy Surf Exchange (Ian Bakewell), Safelist Marketing Tactics (Jerry Iannucci), Austin Hallock
• ALSO ON THE SCENE (all or some days): Brenda Broyles, Dorena Begonia, Paul Brown, Stephen Whittle, John Wagner, Diane Merriam, Sean Supplee, Walter Mulder, Connie Motala, James Holmes… and probably some other folks I missed since I was late a couple of days this week (sorry!).
• QUOTE OF THE WEEK (so far): “I need an ‘ummm crap’ button on my keyboard.” – Winter Perkins

*** Traffic Exchange Live is on UStream every weekday afternoon 3-4 pm EST ***

So, Lynn M. Is Getting Better Again: RE the aforementioned sore throat and all that… yeah, I’ve been getting sick a lot this winter, it seems. And Winter Perkins is probably right – she said the other day she’ll be glad when the weather warms up so maybe I won’t get so many colds and sore throats and stuff (since I have terrible heat here). Spring is definitely finally in the air here now, though, so I guess we’ll see!

Lynn M.’s Traffic Tidbit of the Day: Jon wrote about I Love Hits‘ new Bracket Surfing on the ILH/SWAT blog today right here. I can say that surfing is just wild over there right now and there are all these super competitive “death matches” (LOL) going on between people I know, it’s been a hoot. I’ve gotten to where every morning I log in just to see who’s up against who every day, and sometimes I just go hang out in chat just to see what’s happening. I think everyone who’s been actively participating has really had a lot of fun with it, and it’s been pretty neat to see that people who are around and actively networking a lot at TE Live, Affiliate Funnel, SWAT, and other venues are there for hours every day chatting (and potentially networking) some more – as well as seeing quite a bit of participation in chat and actively and competitively surfing the brackets between folks we don’t usually see “out” at all those places who are just active surfers, too. Some concern was expressed on the ILH/SWAT blog about what the results would be like and whether people would actually subscribe or click on sites, but actually I think it might improve results because I can say, for me, I am frequently spending more time on pages than I normally would while “regular” surfing – and I even subscribed to a list the other day while surfing ILH that I don’t know that I would have paid that much attention to regularly surfing elsewhere.

Anyway, Bracket Surfing is very cool, and the competitiveness has been hilarious, and it’s fun and the new chat room is always hopping these days – check it out at I Love Hits! (PS – I also was told by Tim this afternoon that they just put in the option to be notified by e-mail if you get passed by your opponent!)

Surf’s Up Site of the Day: Traffic Dealer

Why: It’s the latest addition to the KRM group (Traffic-Splash, Fast Easy Traffic, etc.) – more on that tomorrow!

Hey, Check This Out: Looking for hosting? Everyone that’s into Internet marketing of any sort needs hosting, and this might be the solution for you.

If you are a frequent reader (or TE Live attendee), then you likely are well familiar with the name Winter Perkins. Winter’s not only the co-author of the fab TE List Building, but she also co-owns Seamless Web Solutions, a hosting and design company that hosts and/or has designed several TEs and related program, safelist, and other sites you are probably familiar with – including Reactive Adz, Tony Tezak’s new Traffic Exchange Solutions, the new The Traffic Dance, and Eternity Traffic (with a brand new design that just went up this week, and hosting), to name just a few (as well as the TE List Building site of course!). They also do PTC/PTR/GPT sites, if you’re into that kind of thing, as well. Seamless is actually hosting a new blog of mine that just hasn’t gone live yet, too, and Winter is well known around TE Land for her prowess at designing great sites and great graphics.

If you’re just starting out and looking to start your own site or your own blog, Seamless has some excellent solutions, including a 5 GB plan that starts at just $2.49 a month (or $2.25 a month if you go for the yearly instead) – perfect for blogs (and they offer Fantastico with WordPress, which makes blogging even easier). You can count on reliable, 99.9% uptime and live support – matter of fact, some other frequent faces at TE Live and elsewhere work behind the scenes at Seamless – and goodness knows you can almost always find Winter herself at TE Live most weekdays, LOL.

I like and use both ZootHost (which also offers excellent live support) and HostGator as well, but I personally think Seamless is probably the best solution of the three for beginners just starting out – especially if you want to do a blog – simply for the live and one-on-one support that’s available, the availability and ease of Fantastico and WordPress, and the super duper low cost for the 5 GB plan. You might want to comparison shop, but I do highly, highly recommend Winter and her team at Seamless Web Solutions – not only for hosting but design needs as well. Check them out today!

’til next time, I am your TE Live nose for news…

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