Important facts about traffic exchanges from the site http://www.paramind.net. Check them out once you get a chance for cool tips and more information. Traffic exchanges are
business-to-business opt-in "clubs" where you view members web pages
and they view yours in exchange, hence traffic exchange. If you have DSL, Cable, or any other type of
high speed connection and don't have a lot of money for advertising,
traffic exchanges are a must. They will also work with
dial-up connections.Their two types of traffic exchange programs: those that allow you to automatically have the pages change in the web browser automatically (called "auto-surf") and those that require you to click on a top banner-like control to change pages (these are called "manual"). Obviously, to prevent repetitive stress injury, you might want a mix of both. If you have a web host that charges you for bandwidth, you might join these auto-surf sites in increments to see just how much you might be charged month-to-month.
We do not recommend anyone using traffic exchanges without a good antivirus program and some skill in getting rid of spyware. You absolutely need to use a spyware/adware checker as well as a virus checker when you use these accounts. The only anti-spyware program that we've used with consistent success is the freeware program Spybot Search and Destroy.
We are not saying they are all bad, but all the other checkers we've tested are inferior. Many of the others are actually themselves spyware. Good freeware virus checkers are Avast and AVG. They are completely free and update themselves automatically. Several trojans have been spotted on several of these sites, and while these sites can be a great way to market and communicate your ideas to the world, like anywhere else, there are unscrupulous characters who spread these kinds of problems. You must be especially careful on auto traffic exchanges for malware/spyware/trojans.
Most traffic exchanges will give you free hits for signing up, sometimes 500, 1,000, 5,000, or even 10,000 or more free hits to your website. The ones that promise more often don't work. Manual traffic exchanges do not give away as many free hits as the automatic ones. Many traffic exchanges give you a daily bonus in free hits just for signing in.
Our philosophy with traffic exchanges, is the same as with our approved safelists -- if we found the system could not set us up or log us in properly, after three tries we dropped the service. It's faster to sign up to new services by cutting and pasting your information from a text file that you multitask with than it is wondering if these sites really work or not. You also don't want to have too many of the auto-surf ones going to your web page if the web server your web host uses can't handle the traffic. This would mean that your pages would load slow for hits by customers who might be coming to your site from a search engine or other market segment targeted methods. From what we've seen, traffic exchanges are the free Internet marketing resource where one has to be especially careful one doesn't waste time on a bad site. We have had to stop using many sites in the past.
Many of the pages you will see on traffic exchanges are actually scams. Sadly, there are about an equal amount of original products, artist's pages, personal pages, and the like to the same amount of scams or just advertising other traffic exchanges. This could be changed if more people were bringing in new people to these ways of marketing, but unless the amount of people doubles who do traffic exchanges and safelists, it will continue to be this way. However, by reading many of the things you'll see in these pages or emails, you eventually begin to educate yourself about the latest in Internet marketing. Therefore, traffic exchanges and safelists are a type of educational system for online business. They are also a relatively stress-free way of marketing.
Many traffic exchange programs will give you free hits when you sign up but usually those will not be given until you surf a certain amount of pages, which should be a small number, like 25 or at the most 50. Even if the traffic exchange does not state this, if you don't surf and return to the site in two weeks or so you will see you will still have a large amount of free hit credits left. Surf and those should be used for your site. You also have to "allocate" credits from your hit "bank" to your web page. Most traffic exchanges are also banner exchanges, in that they allow you to upload a banner for your website and then will show the banner on the website while people surf.
Traffic exchanges get you into international turf easier than safelists. Some we've seen display web pages in European or Asian languages which makes me realize that there are probably traffic exchanges in most larger countries and language groups. There could actually be traffic exchanges for specific types of sites, like music websites, much like the way Web Rings operate, but I do not see anyone implementing this idea.
About what you'll see on traffic exchanges: are a lot of business opportunities and ways to get more traffic, typically. Many other pages on traffic exchanges are legitimate free marketing programs. Sometimes, you'll see an artist's website or an authors, or any number of people or associations looking for free marketing that might have charitable, altruistic or educational purposes for their sites.
Unfortunately, some of what you see on traffic exchanges are other traffic exchanges and get rich quick scams. Try to find out if there is a big audience viewing your websites to buy your products. Traffic exchanges show that an alternative media exists out there which people could be using if they wanted to. I'm not sure why more people are not using traffic exchanges to promote their products.
In conclusion, I mention traffic exchange sources that I personally use and trust - that have been around for years. The traffic exchanges that mention through out my blog are the ones that give me good results regarding free traffic, with a large membership base. If you decide to join a traffic exchange network take some time to navigate your member's area to get acclimated with the functions and modules in the members' area.
