Traffic Exchanges

Anyone who has thought about starting up a home-based business will eventually encounter Traffic Exchanges in one form or another. Basically they promise to send people to your web site, and all you have to do is view other people’s sites in exchange. Sounds like a fair deal, right? If I go and visit other sites, I get rewarded with visitors to my site. So what’s the catch? (Remember the old saying – ‘If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’).

First, you need to understand how these sites work. I am talking about a typical traffic exchange program, not any specific one, and there may well be sites out there where the system is radically different, and you don’t encounter these issues. If you have found a site like this, please let me know, and I will happily check it out. Who knows, if it is really good I may even sign up for it from your link. But it would have to be pretty special.

As a rule, you are invited to ‘manually surf’ for visitors. You are sent to pages that fit whatever profile you have requested. The sites appear within a frame, within your browser. Outside that frame, but still inside the browser, there are usually one or more banners and text links, and a timing mechanism, which ensures you stay on that site for a set amount of time (usually 10-60 seconds). When your time is up, you are given some kind of activity to perform (matching pictures, rating the site, etc.), which you must complete before you can move on to the next site.

What that means in practice is, even though you may only need to stay on a page for 20 seconds, for example, don’t expect 3 pages a minute, 180 pages an hour. By the time you wait your 20 seconds, complete your task to prove you are still there, wait for your answer to be accepted, and the next page to be called, and the timer to be reset, chances are, it may have taken an extra 5 seconds per page – that is 25% more than you were expecting. So ’20-second’ surfing does not mean you will see 3 pages a minute. And if you actually read even part of the pages, you will be lucky to get 2 pages a minute. Plus, many of them will interrupt your surfing every few minutes with a question you need to answer, or a lottery entry, or something, which reduces the number of sites you visit, and therefore the number of visitors you get!

Then comes the question of how many visitors you receive in exchange. One site I know of boasts a 2:1 ratio – that is, you get 2 visitors for every site you surf! Think about that – if every person signing up for that site gets 2 visitors for every site they surf, where are the other visitors coming from? 10 people each visiting 10 sites (100 total visits) would expect 20 visitors each (200 total visits, but there are only 100 visits being generated by the system). Where do the other 100 come from? The answer is – they don’t. If you read the terms and conditions on this site, you discover that a free account holder does not get 2 visitors for every site they surf – in fact it starts at about 0.34, then builds up slowly. That means if you stay online for an hour to get 100 sites visited, you will probably only earn about 40-50 visitors. The only ones who actually get 2 visitors per site surfed are the ones who pay the maximum monthly fee, and they rely on the free accounts to provide those extra visits. Read the fine print!

Let’s talk about the actual pages you visit for a second. Most of them will be ‘affiliate pages’, or pages built by a vendor to be redistributed by their agents (affiliates), in order to sell their products, from which the affiliate gets a commission. There are millions of these around (literally). When you decide you are going to make your fortune online, chances are you will encounter dozens of businesses, offering to give you a free web site, and all you have to do is drive in customers, and you will get rich (you know the type). So the would-be millionaire does some quick research, reads the headlines only from these traffic exchange ads, and signs up with his affiliate page, without thinking about what he/she is really doing.

The problem with these is that these pages are designed to be sales pitches, and will often take 2-3 minutes or more to read in full. If you take the time to read each one, you will spend hours surfing and get very few visitors in return. So most of them never get read beyond the headline. Is that a worthwhile visit?

There is a second problem with many of these sales pages as well – many of them have so many graphic components (pictures, links, etc), that they actually take longer to load than the time allocated for you to read them!

My advice is – if you are taken to this type of page while surfing, wait out your allotted time, complete your task and move on. You are probably safe in guessing that the person who submitted that page probably does not know what they are doing; they are just following some poor advice; and even if you do buy, you probably will not get any kind of decent customer service from them.

The only ones worth your while reading are those that load almost instantly, fit within your surfing window with little or no scrolling, give you just enough information that you can read it all in your allotted time, and tell you that clicking on the link for more information will open the full page in a new window. These are called ‘landing pages’. If you click on any link, they open a new window containing their full pitch, but they do not interfere with your surfing window, so you can carry on surfing and come back to the information when you are done. A well-designed landing page is the mark of someone who cares about his or her visitors. They know you are surfing, but want a chance to give you their full pitch, with no time pressure on you, so you can make an informed decision. Chances are, if you do buy from them, they will offer a much higher level of customer service as well.

That brings up the subject of the page you are submitting to that site. If your page looks like the front of a glossy magazine, it will probably not load before your visitor’s time runs out, so they will not learn anything at all about your product or service. That means it is wasted visit. And if yours is an affiliate sales page, chances are it will never be read in full.

The best way to get value out of a traffic exchange is to use a landing page.

If you have your own web site, set up a simple page that puts your main message across in just a few words, and make sure the links open in a new window. Then set this as your landing page that you submit to the traffic exchanges. You will look like you know what you are doing, and have a much better return from your visitors.

Which brings up two key points. If you are serious about making money online you need to have your own web site, and you need to have people sign up to your own list before you send them off to sign up on someone else’s. The reasons for having a web site and having your own list are outlined on my web site, and will be the subject of a future Blog. If you do not have a web site, you can get one here. Fees are small, but the difference it will make to your business is potentially huge. And if you don’t know how to set up your site, or what to put on your site, click here.

Let’s talk for a minute about two other trends in Traffic Exchanges; auto surfing and multi-site surfing. These are both tools to get you to visit more sites more quickly. In theory, that means you get more visitors to your site in less time. But do you really want those extra visitors?

Auto surfing means you are taken from one page to the next, to the next, regardless of whether you are actually sitting at your computer or not. You could be off doing the ironing, or watching your favourite sport on TV (or both), and somebody is being told that you are viewing his or her web page. Trouble is, when you are told you have earned all these visitors to your site, there is a good chance they will be doing the same thing, and nobody is actually seeing your page.

Having said that, auto surfing is not always a complete waste of time. If you are driving up your visitor count in order to impress someone, or in order to convince someone to advertise on your site, then this is a quick and easy way to do it – but don’t expect to make any money, either for yourself or your advertiser.

That leaves multi-site surfing. Several traffic exchanges actively encourage this practice. It drives up their volume numbers, and sends more traffic to the site of the person doing it. What this involves is opening several browser windows (or tabs), logging on to a different traffic exchange in each of them, manually surfing in each of them, but instead of actually viewing the pages, simply jumping back and forth, completing the tasks to prove you are still there, in each window in turn. I certainly would not want the people visiting my site to be doing that – nobody would be reading my page, or my pitch.

To sum this all up, manually surfing can be an eye-opening experience; it can bring you traffic to your site; and if you work it properly, can be a worthwhile way to spend time you would otherwise spend watching TV, killing time waiting for the delivery man, or trying to get tired before you go to bed. But be sensible, and don’t expect to get a lot of response from your visitors unless you are using a proper landing page.

Dave Ketteringham has spent over 20 years as a consultant, trainer and sales advisor, and is the driving force behind Marketing Made EZ

Welcome.

Welcome my blog. Over the next weeks, I will be reviewing several business opportunities, and rating them for things like delivering ‘what it says on the tin’. For example, if a business says it is free to join, and that it is possible to make a stupid amount of money every month while doing nothing, can you really expect to pay nothing, do nothing and become a millionaire by next year? (I feel a rant coming on, so stay tuned…)

My very first editorial will be on traffic exchange programs. Watch out for it coming soon.

D