Free Traffic Bar-- Better Than InstantBuzz!

Today I'm going to look at FreeTrafficBar. FreeTrafficBar is a website with goals extremely similar to InstantBuzz, in that it is free to join, and you put a new toolbar on your browser that displays one line text ads from users like yourself. The advertisement on the bar changes every time you visit a webpage with a new URL, or any new section of a website with a new URL. It should be noted that when you change tabs on Firefox, it shows you a new ad and gives you a "point". The points that you earn are converted at a 4:1 ratio (for a basic free user) into displaying your own advertisement in the FreeTrafficBar system. 4 ads viewed on your computer means 1 ad displayed on someone else's computer somewhere else on the internet! Compared to InstantBuzz's 20:1 ratio, this seems fantastic!

The FreeTrafficBar toolbar is fairly unobtrusive and looks like this in your browser window:


Not bad, right? Well, time to examine the process of creating ads, uploading them to the bar, and finally their clickthrough.

Process and Uploading: The process of creating an ad is very simple. You simply click on the FTB Info tab on your toolbar, drop down to Toolbar Ads, and it will open up a new window to prompt you to create an ad. After creating your ad, which has few restrictions compared to InstantBuzz (the only restriction is 65 characters), your ad will not be active until it is approved by the site administrator, which only takes about a day. All in all, a great experience!

Clickthrough Examined: I went to examine my clickthrough data for my first advertisement which I created to promote my Agloco referral link, and the results were as follows:

Impressions: 2996
Clicks: 1 (What the hell!?)

OUCH! That's terrible. FreeToolBar isn't looking too great, even with its superior viewed:displayed ads ratio. However, for the sake of giving it a second chance, I decided to create a new ad that promoted this blog, since I could always use a little more traffic than the 30 hits a day I get right now. After a couple days of scant internet use, my results were as follows:

Impressions: 155 (I said scant internet use.)
Clicks: 2 (!!!!)

Not bad! More clicks than my Agloco referral link, in more than 1/10th the impressions! This is working much better! I'll update you guys on my results for this promotion as I continue to use it, as the results have been promising so far.

FreeTrafficBar does offer a multi-tiered referral system, as well as multiple levels of premium subscriptions that reward the user with better ratios for advertisements viewed:displayed, as well as a flat bonus number of impressions per month. If my clickthrough ratio continues to be good and blog gets a lot more hits, I'll be sure to subscribe, because it seems to be a decent deal! However, even if you have no referrals and want to remain a free member, I would actually recommend FreeTrafficBar. It ain't bad.

The verdict:

Thumbs up yo

Instant Buzz-- More Like Instant Nothing

InstantBuzz advertises the following on their site:

"Instant Buzz - Drops a Metric Ton of Traffic on Your Web Site"

Cool beans! It's free, and it drops METRIC TONS of traffic on my site. "Man, I better try this!" I figure, so off I go signing up! InstantBuzz works by using an ad bar on your browser (both IE and Firefox are supported) that changes advertisements every time you go to a new web page. Sounds good. What they don't tell you before you sign up is that you have to visit 20 pages to get your one line of text advertising shown once!

The bar is not that large or obtrusive, it is below, as seen on Internet Explorer.


Not bad, not bad. So, I surf for about a month and a half with the thing after making a generic advertisement like "Make Money Surfing the Web With Agloco!" or whatever. I am sure that if I find some other way to make a catchy advertisement then I'd get a few more clicks, but according to InstantBuzz thousands of people would be seeing this! I was about to rake in the traffic to my Agloco referral URL! I check my Agloco referrals page, and WOAH, I have gotten... no new referrals. Excellent, sounded too good to be true. Now to check up on my stats for my advertisement after working hard surfing for a month.


Oh boy. Out of 1700 people who looked at this, NONE clicked on my ad? I guess everyone else has just been trained to ignore the little bar on their screen, just like I have. Is InstantBuzz an honest service? Yes, I absolutely believe that it is. Is there a potential to get a lot of traffic from it? Yes, if you make a better advertisement, buy their premium membership so you can add colors to your ads, and refer a gajillion people to get extra ad impressions, I guess. But for someone trying to break into the business of INTERNET RICHES, I would not recommend this.

My Rating of InstantBuzz is as follows:


Crying Baby. Maybe I was a little generous...