On the affiliate front I had a very unusual email from trafficavenue.com (they set up a traffic marketplace for domains) today, they still owe a lot of people money it would seem.

This was sent out to all there users appartently, and I've posted in the main part. I would have thought there would be a proper bankruptcy proceeding, so surely creditors should be properley notified?


"Hello!

Traffic Avenue is struggling to survive financially, as you may have
guessed. I am no longer with the company however I am helping them in the technical closeout.

If you have registered domain names at Traffic Avenue, please create an account at enom.com and let me know the enom user name as well as the list of domains you registered. I will transfer those names to your enom account within 48 hours after receipt of your reply.

In the meantime, I don't know if Traffic Avenue will come back online. However, I do own the patent and code bank which used to run Traffic Avenue. If you wish to operate your own Traffic Avenue type service for your own domain names, including all the traffic counting features, setting your own prices for rentals, etc, please respond to this message."

This is the first sign of the fall of resellers for Registrars.

mike

It looks like Traffic Avenue has left both their domain registrants and type-in traffic sellers in quite a lurch.

Snoopy, Your article made me think of a few questions on this topic that maybe you or another member can answer.

How long has their site been down for, I can't get www.trafficavenue.com to come up? It's a blank page.

So there was no announcement of its impending closure and no explanation? They just high-tailed it and have ran off without paying the type-in domain owners the money due them?

Is www.trafficavenue.com par for the course when it comes to dealing with companies that pay for clickthrus on a type-in traffic domain, or are they an exception?

Which click thru companies are worthwhile for type-in domain owners to deal with now and in the future?

Which ones are currently meeting their obligations to type-in domain owners?

mike,

95% of affiliates on the net are to be avoided and the other 5% are only slightly better, good programs are a rarity. Trafficavenue was a good idea but the chances of any new program like that folding tommorrow are high, and of course on the net there isn't a lot you can do when the disappear or decide not to pay.

mike

Well then, looks like we'll have our work cut out for us here, helping members to seperate the wheat from the chaff.

Snoop, can you name what you would consider a "good program" that you alluded to above for our readers, so we can contrast it against the many bad programs out there?

Mike it depends entirely on what kind of program you're after, and there are thousands about. For search I've heard good things about overture and findwhat (though I don't use them myself).