Traffic Exchanges – Do They Work?
Looking at Traffic Exchanges — So, do they work or not?
Traffic exchanges are systems set up to share traffic. The idea hinges around you visiting other people’s web sites in exchange for visits to your website. Usually you have to spend a minimum amount of time on another website for it to count, and you will have to visit two or more other web sites in exchange for one visit to your site.
When you join a traffic exchange you usually have to set your browser to go to a default URL upon the browser program being started. You then click on small website ads that attract you, visiting each site in turn while the top frame in your browser maintains the traffic exchange centre of operations.
So that’s how they work, but will they bring you much traffic? The answer is both yes and no. Obviously, you can obtain a greater or lesser amount of traffic to your website depending on how many times you click on and visit other people’s sites in the traffic exchange network. You will most likely have to visit twice as many sites as you will get visitors to your site.
But all visitors are not created equal. What you want to get to your site are well-motivated visitors who are interested in your services or products. Will traffic exchanges bring these kinds of visitors to you? Visitors who only visit your site for the purpose of generating visits back to their own site are not well motivated to buy and are unlikely to have any interest in your services or products. They have joined the traffic exchange for the same reason that you did — to get return clicks.
This means that most visitors you will receive your traffic exchange are only interested in receiving traffic to their own website, so, if you were selling services or products related to website traffic then it might be worth giving traffic exchanges a try. But most people do not have web sites about website traffic. In any case most people seem to be agreed that traffic exchanges are not a very good source of traffic — especially when compared with better forms of traffic generation (see below). For Internet Marketing purposes two top traffic exchanges that some people do seem to value are:
Traffic Swarm
Instant Buzz
What is more, for traffic exchanges to keep working in sending you traffic, you have to keep surfing the other sites in their network, and staying on those sites long enough to generate reciprocal clicks. This is time-consuming and usually boring. Online business should be about doing things that you enjoy, as it is your enjoyment and passion for your niche that will communicate to others and encourage them to visit your site and purchase your services and products.
In general therefore, traffic exchanges are not a method that I can recommend to bring traffic to your website. For sustainable, low-maintenance traffic-methods that will bring you long term traffic I recommend the methods I’ve outlined at ‘Website Traffic Starting Points‘.
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Traffic Folder is about helping you to increase traffic to your website, especially if you are on a limited budget or looking for no-cost techniques.
But you say they don’t really work. When you COULD use them to attract peoples attention. Such as a big advert for the thing that only you offer which could catch anyones eye. Does this work and do people do it?