The ClickTrackProfit Christmas Badge Hunt has begun. Whoopee! Only a few months ago, the previous badge hunt had ended, and already a new one has arrived for our Christmas entertainment.
Recently in CTPtalk.com, there have been a few articles and comments made regarding these hunts. Questions have been raised about why so many people are addicted to using traffic exchanges. Perhaps some history from my 10 years of surfing experience may help explain that rather odd phenomenon, at least from my own personal perspective.
Since April 2009 when I became an affiliate for Clickbank, I have maintained a spreadsheet of my internet adventures. I tasted affiliate marketing for a while and tried to promote using the only resource I had available at that time, being social media. Because I had only a few followers, I had limited success. I could not afford to get my own website, so I used WordPress.org and set up a few blogposts. I didn't have enough knowledge to make a real go of that venture which really was just a hobby for me anyway.
My offline projects consumed my time for a while until I was able to resurrect my online hobby business in May 2010. Coming to the realisation that I needed to advertise the various affiliated wares I was promoting, I looked for the best way to do that with the very little money I could afford to invest.
My focus back then was to build my social media following, so I joined over 30 social media sites and began promoting programs that would increase followers to the places like Twitter and Facebook. A few months later, my own following had increased enough for me to be confident that I had enough exposure to rekindle my affiliate marketing business again.
Initially, I went looking for advertising sites to promote these social media follower sites. Not having too much success, I began promoting these advertising sites themselves. The promise of easy money to be made and without any effort, that was just too distracting and lead me away from my core business of affiliate marketing.
In July 2012, I clicked on a CTP badge being promoted by Irving Sears Jnr on ListSurfing.com and that led me to ClickTrackProfit, so I joined that site. I began making some money from their cash badges they used to have on traffic exchanges, and from the one or two referrals I had that actually upgraded (nice!).
My focus had shifted and now I was heavily involved in surfing and promoting traffic exchanges, and converting CTP cash badges into money. I was on a roll for a while, earning enough money to upgrade on CTP. Again, I got distracted by easy money and little effort, and wandered down a different path that led to matrices, hyip, and other less ethical sites.
In 2015, my PC died. I was living with my twin brother and he refused to let me use his PC for anything but gaming. In July 2019, Mary and I got our own place, and we got a new PC and reconnected with the internet. Oh happy days!
A forced break for almost four years and wow, the whole internet marketing scene thingie had changed big-time! Crypto was a joke back in 2015, and now the tide had truly turned as the former cash sites were struggling to stay in business so were offering very little returns on time invested; a lot of them refused to pay out to free members, offering just credits to promote your wares. Unreal, just less that four years, and my dream of residual revenue streams had gone.
After a couple of days of distress, I was back on ClickTrackProfit. I needed a way to kick-start my business again, and I was hoping my mate 
Man, did he what! Out had gone the old ways of encouraging freeloaders through cash badges, and promoting traffic exchanges as the means of generating wealth, and in came the new refurbished look rifled down to affiliation.
Yep, ClickTrackProfit had been phoenixed into the site that Jon Olson had first envisioned: an affiliate marketing platform to teach people desperate to build their online business, in a friendly and methodical manner. The core focus had reverted back to personal brand building in conjunction with building your own list.
As Jon pointed out, and continues to state, you cannot trust any site you do not own as the keeper of your own list, being the email addresses of your own customers built up over many years. That list is your intellectual property and is priceless, as without customers you are doomed to fail in any business be that online or offline.
Jon and his site co-owner 
So, how do you go about building your personal brand, and building your list?
Well that's easy, just join their program. Yes, a free site that offers free money with little effort, like all the other sites, right? Too good to be true, yeah? Well, there is just a little bit of work involved:
Yep, traffic exchanges are too easy alright, just keep working your fingers with that click-click-click, what are you going to end up getting?
Boney fingers.
Ian Ballantine
Wellington, New Zealand
December 19, 2019.
My CTP referral link: https://clicktrackprofit.com/ianballantine
Lyrics: https://cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/axton-hoyt/boney-fingers-237.html
Playlist:
