I'm new to this forum and just wanted to introduce myself..I'm Pauline and I'm a TE owner and own a social site, a free ad forum especially to promote your fav TE's, and a few blogs. I've been marketing online for 7 years and love every minute of it. My passion is my TE and I work very hard to make it a happy place for people to promote their sites.

I was reading a post that said TE's don't work, and I hope you don't mind if I put my 2 cents in. There are few reasons why TE's don't work, I agree one is that some people just sign up and expect the TE to work without putting in some effort themselves, well that can work if you are an upgraded member. The upgrades are their for those who don't have time to surf, or who don't much like surfing.

The main reason some TE's don't work is because the admin/owner doesn't look after their inventory. What you don't want to do to keep your TE going is offer ridiculous amounts of credits for new signups. The truth is you can't give away what you don't have, even if you think it will attract new members, I made that very same mistake with my first TE.

Ok my first TE grew very quickly and in a short time had over 400 members, but it was doomed to fail because I was too generous and didn't understand the importance of keeping my inventory intact. eg Say I opened a new store offline and I offered a free stereo to the first 500 customers...but I only had 50 stereos in stock, I'd have 450 very unhappy people who no doubt would not be future customers.

The same goes with TE's if I offer 1000 credits to the first 500 members and I don't have those credits in my inventory, I won't be able to provide the traffic I promised and you won't be getting hits to your site. My TE will eventually fail. I can however offer banner impressions and text impressions which I do, and other incentives.

I think a lot of people don't understand we have to watch our stock just like any shop does...I was the worst offender when I first started using TE's, I only joined sites that offered huge credit incentives or free upgrades and wondered why I wasn't getting sign ups. I've learned a lot since then, and although my new TE is growing much slower than my first, I know it will eventually succeed. I plan to be around a long time and build a great TE. We as TE owners offer a service to our members and our members keep us going, not the other way round, we need to value them and give them what we promise.

I hope this helps you understand why some TE's don't offer huge credit incentives, or free upgrades. I should add the more established TE's can offer these incentives, and one day I will too, I love giving things away LOL.

Have A Great Day,

Pauline