Traffic Exchanges and How to Best Use Them

I look for many ways to advertise for free or for little money and I have learned a lot of things along the way.  At this point the main form of my advertising is Traffic Exchanges.

Do they work?  Well, yes and no.  If you are like most people who use Traffic Exchanges, you will use an affiliate landing page or website to post on your Traffic Exchanges.  If this describes you then most likely Traffic Exchanges are not working for you.

However if you designed and are using your own landing page then your Traffic Exchanges may be working for you.  I say “may be” because there are still some things you need to consider.

First, you must accept the fact that most people who use Traffic Exchanges are doing what I am doing and that is surfing to get credits so my site will be shown to others.  If you use more than one traffic exchange, like I do, then expect that the average surfer will spend about ½ to 1 second looking at your site.

This means that you must do something to your site to grab their attention in that blink of an eye.  This is where most sites also fail.  They throw in a lot of text or no text and just a cute picture (sometimes this can work provided the picture easily tells a story).  The text they do use is often too small to catch one’s attention quickly and the text does not inspire some action.

When you use a website or landing page that you made or that was mass produced by the company you are promoting, it is important that the “Call to Action” text is above the “Fold”, meaning the viewer does not have to scroll down the page to read it.

Also with all of the browser tools to protect you from hackers and other devious scum bags (I bet you can tell that I have a very low opinion of people who try to hurt others or steal from others.), it is important to not have fancy things on your landing page or website that you use for Traffic Exchanges.

For example, I use FireFox and with my add-ons a couple of things happen.  If the site I go to is a redirect site then FireFox asks if I want to “allow” the redirect website.  I always say “NO” and therefore never even see the site and I still get credit for viewing it.

I also recently added “Scripts” which blocks everything on the website except the basic content.  Then I need to choose if I want that cute audio to play, that stunning video to start, that statistics counter to activate, and so on.  While surfing I just ignore these and therefore never see your great flash presentation and so on.

Granted, most people don’t take advantage of all this protection.  Eventually they will, thanks to the scum bags of the world who are too lazy to earn a living in an honest manner or who just want to make others as miserable as they are.

Finally, I shut off my sound when I surf, just in case an audio or video does start.  Listening to anything except soft background music while I am surfing is totally annoying to me.  I take that back.  I do sometimes surf while watching TV.

With all that has been said, how does one successfully make use of Traffic Exchanges?  Great question and I really don’t have any great answer because your results for what you are doing may be different from mine.  This means that you need to TEST your advertising to see what works best.

[Side Bar: I just came across a new service this morning that does the testing for you, in a general way.  They test many different forms of advertising and then they post their results so that their members can get a good idea of what forms of advertising and advertising sites to use.  Of course you still need to test for your own results for your landing pages or ads.]

This is what I have done and will be doing to make my advertising efforts more productive:

•    I make my own landing page advertising websites so I can control how they look and work plus track my results.
•    My focus is (or should be) on building a relationship first and then selling.  To do this I need names and email addresses.
•    To get names and email addresses I must give something of value in exchange for their contact information.
•    I am working on making my landing pages more captivating to motivate viewers to take action and give me their contact information or at least visit my main website where they can give me their contact information in exchange for a valuable gift.

You may be saying to yourself: “This is a lot of work and I don’t have the skill or tools to make my own website.”  I didn’t have the skills and tools either and I learned the skills and got the tools.  It’s that important to your success.

I believe this is the number one main reason why so many people fail at developing a successful online home-based business.  We have all been taught from birth to look for and expect the easy road and the fast road to our destination with little or no work.

Well, in the real world it just doesn’t happen that way.  There is no passive or “we do all the work for you” programs in existence unless you have the money to have someone else do it for you.

This is my offer: If you are serious about making a successful internet business and you are willing to work, then I will help you, up to a point.  I had to add “up to a point” because I will not do the work for you.  I said I will “HELP” you.  That’s a big difference.  As of today, my help will not have a dollar price on it.  If I get too many people taking me up on my offer, I may have to rethink my offer.
Since very few people will ever see this article then I don’t expect to be bombarded with a lot of requests for assistance.

Also keep in mind that I am not a guru, a master web designer, or anything else.  I am just an ordinary (well I really think I am much more than ordinary) guy who loves helping people.  Now that I am retired, I don’t get the opportunity to help as much as I used to and I kind of miss that.

Send me an email at gary@MasterYourUniverse.com if you would like to talk further.

This entry was posted on 6. June 2009 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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