The Pros and Cons of Traffic Exchanges

Traffic exchanges have come a long way since they first became a popular way of gaining website traffic. A few years ago, there were only a handful of these types of sites, but today there are hundreds of them. Depending on which ones you choose, there are some good and bad aspects of this type of exposure.

It used to be that the only thing you gained from a traffic exchange was a few hits to your website. These days, many are actually awarding money for a person's time. How much money depends on the site and how often you participate. The biggest problem is that you've got to spend hours upon hours clicking from one site to the next. Most times you only end up with a few cents in your account and blisters on your fingers.

All traffic exchanges give you several ways to promote your businesses. You can show off your site, put up banner ads, and even put up a few text ads. If you click enough, you can earn quite a bit of exposure on each site. The trick is to come up with something that isn't shown on every other site, and that will make people want to take a few extra minutes to actually go to your site.

These sites are supposed to help you get customers to your site, and possibly make a sale or two. However, that's the same thing that everyone else is trying to do, and most times you can work yourself to death and only bring in a couple of people who only stop long enough to find out that you're promoting the exact same thing they are. It becomes a vicious cycle of who can get the most people to the same site.

It seems that the main goal of all traffic exchanges is to get the most referrals underneath you. When you and a thousand other people are working toward the same goal, you find that you can become lost in a sea of similar splash pages. A few creative types actually make their own pages, and get a few more referrals than the others. You begin to notice that almost everyone is promoting other traffic exchanges, rather than actual business ventures. The business promotions that are being shown, are usually for something that enters into the category of "too good to be true".

One thing to remember when it comes to traffic exchanges, is that you've got to be careful about what you have shown. For anyone wants to promote their website, make sure you don't have any Google ads on your pages. Showing off a site with Google ads on them can get you into trouble with Google, and can possibly lose your account. You can, however, create a banner that will lead people to your site. But, again, you've got to make it enticing enough to bring in prospects.

If you plan on using a traffic exchange to promote your work or business, make sure you've got plenty of time work the system. Surfing only a few sites a day won't earn you enough credits to do any good. You've got to spend hours building up your account credits in order to make it really work. But, if you've got something that the rest of the world is interested in, this could be a way to bring them to your door.