TRAFFIC EXCHANGES - How to Choose and Use Them

Traffic Exchanges are NOT created equal.
You can exclude great swathes of the exchanges on offer as completely useless time wasters.

1 AutoSurf exchanges generate stacks of traffic but none of it converts. Experienced users will avoid this sector totally.

2. Manual exchanges vary widely in effectiveness. Many (most?) are ineffective in generating useful prospects and are better skippped.

3 Traffic Hoopla maintains an objective statistical database comparing the effectiveness of all significant traffic exchanges. This is excellent value to consult to avoid wasting time on exchanges that do not produce leads which convert.

There is a modest charge in return for which you get totally objective advice. If they had to rely on advertising revenues, you would lose their objectivity. So accept that sometimes it is in your own interest to pay a few dollars to preserve the independent quality of advice.

4. Your traffic will comprise other Traffic Exchange users. These are mainly other Internet Marketers which is fine if you are selling a product or service targeted at Internet Marketers.

BUT if you are pursuing a niche market you risk very low conversion rates from Traffic Exchange traffic because of targeting problems. Untargeted traffic is rarely worth its cost in money or time, so better to pursue another line of attack where you can identify properly targeted traffic.

A relatively new and lesser known technique for attracting visitors is the Blog Traffic Exchange.

The traditional traffic exchange operates by display of splash pages or textual small ads which link through to a lead capture or sales page when clicked. Surfers earn credits redeemable by display of their ads to other exchange users. Tradtional traffic exchange surfers thus sell to each other, either directly or by autoresponder followup.

Blog exchanges work through surfers earning and redeeming credits for visiting the blogs of other exchange members. Monetization is either direct by click through to PPC or affiliate ads or indirect via subscription to reader lists which can be subsequently mailed by autoresponder.

PPC publishers such as Google Adwords/Adsense are concerned that the value of pay per click advertising is debased by traffic originating from techniques such as blog traffic exchanges.

Google's terms of trade for Adsense does not allow display of Adsense ads to "artificially" generated traffic. So, if you are using blog exchanges to directly generate Adsense income then beware, you could lose your Adsense account.

Some blog exchange names to consider are (in no particular order):
Blog Advance
Blog Catalogue
Blog Explosion
Blog Flux
Blog Mad
Blog Soldiers