FEATURED ARTICLE

New Logo, New Look, More Services
Eva J. Mah and Aaron Peavy
Nexus Exchange Owners/Admin

Hail 2007! The dawning of a new year makes people reflect on the past and stimulates thoughts of change. We did more than think, we acted!

It started with the logo. Aaron found a fantastic graphics programs and designed awesome new logos for both Nexus Exchange and Cache Articles. Great, but now we had to change the Nexus logo everywhere that we put it. That meant redoing all the banners and splash pages for Nexus. And if we were going to go through all that trouble, we may as well redesign the site itself. But why stop there? We let our programmer in on the fun and gave him stuff to do on the script as well. Talk about busy holidays!

Since the cosmetic changes are self evident, let's review the not-so-obvious changes made to Nexus Exchange.

Text link ads are now prominently featured on the control console and in the back office. All members may submit text link ads. Text links are limited to 20 characters. Text link submissions must abide by our site acceptance policy and terms of service.

Start page ads are available. Sponsor the first page seen by all active members for $15 per week. Email us for the next available slot.

Ad campaigns are now auto-approved. We also now accept rotators. All sites must abide by our site acceptance policy and terms of service. Site reports will be investigated. Repeat offenders will have their accounts disabled.

All advertising credits are auto-assigned to your campaigns. Credits are added directly to your storage as they are earned or bought. The appropriate number of credits will be deducted when your sites are shown in rotation. You may pause individual campaigns if you wish.

Banners are no longer linked to specific campaigns. Banner management now has its own separate area in your Nexus Exchange back office. We have also added the members' banner rotator to our referral pages. Now your banners get added exposure outside of our program when the pages are used to recruit new referrals.

These changes were designed to extend your advertising reach beyond the program and to improve traffic flow within the system.

NEXUS EXCHANGE UPDATE

The Price of GOLD Plummets!
Gold membership at Nexus Exchange, that is. The price of our GOLD membership package has been slashed to $9.97 per month; however, our GOLD membership package no longer includes complimentary web hosting. GOLD members who currently have hosting with us will not be charged for hosting as long as their current subscription remains active. You can review our current membership packages here.

Web Hosting Package available to all members
Web hosting on our dedicated server is now available to all Nexus Exchange members for $9.97 per month. It is the same package that we offered to GOLD members previously. You can review the details of our hosting package here.

Bonus Page is Back! along with Wacky Wednesdays
We've got the Bonus Page back online awarding credits and banner impressions to all active members. Members may also collect SplashPoints on those pages. Every Wednesday, no less than 15 SplashPoints can be collected per bonus page found while viewing sites. Register for your free SplashPoints account here.

Spring Cleaning for the Members Area
My Site Manager has a much cleaner look now. There is only one icon now. That icon is for viewing sites to earn advertising credits. What happened to all the other icons? They have morphed into hyperlinks and were incorporated into the My Site Manager navigation bar.

Conferences Back Online
Our online conference schedule has resumed. Click on Support Room in the members' area for the scheduled times and the download link for our conference room.

Are you using excite.com for your contact email address?
We have noticed that potential members registering with excite.com email addresses are not receiving the validation email messages. If you are using an excite.com address for your contact email, please send us an email to change it.

Members' To Do List
Next time you login to Nexus Exchange, please do the following:

• All members


• Check credit storage under Site Statistics


• Review your full page campaigns under Manage Sites. No need to assign credits, but you may pause individual campaigns if needed.


• Review your banners under Manage Banners. Conversion ratio is 1 credit=25 banner impressions. Banner image must be 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall to show without distortion.


• Add your text ad links under Manage Text Links. Conversion ratio is 1 credit=20 text link impressions. Limit 20 characters.
• 
  
• Check out the new referral material under Manage Referral Links


• View 45 sites to collect SplashPoints




• Upgraded members


• Broadcast a message to your personal referrals through our in-house message system


• Submit your text ads for our newsletter under Manage Newsletter Ads

PICK OF THE WEEK:

John Higgins, III: programmer extraordinaire and owner of Traffic Rodeo

Owners accept the credit for a successful traffic exchange, but truth of the matter is, without a competent programmer to maintain the script, the darn thing wouldn't even run! From the time that we launched in September of 2005, our programmer, John Higgins, has kept Nexus Exchange online and running smoothly. John took a stock traffic exchange script and let us talk him into turning it into something barely recognizable. Whenever we ask for something, John always delivers.

If ever you need script programming services, we highly recommend John Higgins. He can be contacted by email or through Traffic Rodeo.

THROUGH THE EYES OF Nexus Exchange ...

If you can't take the heat ...

Last month, we were speaking on the phone with the owner of a company that promised to train us in the arts of duplication and leverage. He dropped a few names and quoted some numbers that made our situation sound pretty dismal. Hey, if we didn't think that we could improve, we wouldn't have been talking to him in the first place. Nothing he said came as a surprise to us. Well, at least nothing he said up to that point was a surprise to us.

Aaron asked the question what made this training program different from all the others that are available? Some pretty big names are offering their own mentoring, so why should we go with this company? The owner of the company did not have an answer. In fact, he even said that he should have an answer to that question, but he simply did not. The phone conversation ended shortly thereafter. We did not do any business with this company.

Moral of the story: If you can't tell a potential client why you should be chosen over your competition, close up shop and go home.