Traffic Exchanges I Use

There is always going to be dissention among webmasters over traffic exchanges. Heck, anything having to do with site promotion is likely to spark a discussion, arguement, even a knock down dragout fight among webmasters.

Why is this?

Too many webmasters just simply need to get laid.


I do use traffic exchanges, and to good effect.

One of my favorite types of traffic exchanges is the TrafficSwarm style where the exchange is set up like a mini directory with a listing and short description for the site, and you decide if you want to visit the site, visit any of the sites on that page, or move on to another page of links.

The key is that you decide what you want to view, not the exchange.

These types of exchanges often have a 1:1 or better exchange ratio, providing you with an optimum number of visitors for your clicks.

Personally, I would never use an exchange with less than a 2:1 ratio (for every two sites you visit, one visits your site). 3:1, and 4:1 ratio traffic exchanges are just a waste of time and a massive joke anyway.


Exchanges of the TrafficSwarm type are:

Web Traffic Genie - Generous on the hits ratio. They could do with implementing a cap (limit) on the number of credits your sites use each day; so that you can spread out your credits rather than using them up all in the same day. This is Iven's refferal link as he was the one who first posted about it.

HitMagik - A little limiting on the number of allowed sites as they only allow you to list 3 sites, but the credits earned for visiting other sites do pay off well. Bonuses include have a links page that you can promote which not only provides a refferal link but also lists your sites: (this is mine) http://www.hitmagik.com/?magik=zhorkow&links=1

TrafficSwarm - The original and still the best of this type of traffic exchange. Having been around for quite a while has earned them a good reputation, plus it provides quite a pool of webmasters instead of just circulating the same sites to the same webmasters.


The Autosurf exchange?

Does it have a purpose?

Of course it does, however, its purpose is not necessarily in the exchange itself; but I'll explain that later.

An autosurf exchange I use to good effect is PsychoHits. They provide a lot more than most any autosurf exchange out there. Presently you get 5000 bonus credits just for signing up (that was not a misprint) and a 1:1 surfing ratio (that was not a misprint either and you will be hard pressed to find another traffic exchange that is both effective and gives you equal hits to clicks).

They do, additionally, offer a manual surf exchange.

The admins, unlike many traffic exchanges, really want to succeed with this and make themselves available through a forum and PM system. Communication is excellent, and that is rare among traffic exchanges.

I don't surf there anymore. I don't have to; my referrals are so deep that I earn credits by doing nothing.


The one and only?

Is there a traffic exchange with a difference?

One which offers not only a difference in how it works but in being more effective because of how it works?

LinkReferral is such a traffic exchange.

A traffic exchange? But it doesn't look like one.

That's where LinkReferral is so effective. It is set up like a directory, categorized, and requiring participation in order for others to earn...uhm...exposure.

LinkReferral does not work on a credits system like other traffic exchanges, and there is a limit on the surfing you can do (you can go beyond that, but it does not earn you anything if you do.

Members of LinkReferral search through categories of sites which interest them and get position by visiting so many sites and reviewing these sites. This makes certain that someone is actually seeing your site and not just clicking past it.

How does this surfing work for you? The more sites you visit, and reviews you write, will push your own site up sooner in the directory, with the idea being to get it to the first page.

Of course anybody can go in and write a review that says 'nice site' (and some do that) to earn their credits. However, the staff at LinkReferral reads those reviews and grades the reviewers. If you pay attention to sites and even include helpful hints in your reviews, you will be rewarded with a higher grade which in turn makes your reviews earn you higher ranking in the directory.

LinkReferral has put together the most effective traffic exchange and is where I pulled in the most referrals to my member exchanges.


Isn't it just webmasters who surf these exchanges?

Yes.

Then what good are they?

If you are looking for visitors to your hobby site or another site which is for personal interest, traffic exchanges really aren't going to do much good for you. It will bring you an occasional link because some webmaster may have liked your site and decided to link to it.

Where traffic exchanges benefit webmasters is in promoting affiliate programs and building up your traffic from other sites.

Affiliate programs, like any other referral program, benefit from getting other webmasters to see your program to entice them to sign up so you can earn downlines from their efforts as well. That is where traffic exchanges shine the most as they get other webmasters to see your programs.

Another benefit of traffic exchanges is to use them to increase your ranking with other promotional services; such as topsites and banner exchanges. These programs place you in lists, or otherwise provide visibility for your site, based on the number of visitors you have to your site. Getting your site in a traffic exchange increases the visitors and increases your ranking with topsites and earns you points from other exchanges.


Of course, these exchanges aren't for everybody, and webmasters will always disagree as to how to promote their sites.

Thanks for the great review and informations of all traffic exchange sites.

But I have some questions.

Which is the best traffic exchange program?

Do you think this thing worth for our sites? OR Is it wasting of time?

How much traffic you got from these programs for your site?

Aw...heck if I know.

It would depend on what you want as a webmaster.

If you are looking for quality, unique traffic, I would recommend LinkReferral and TrafficSwarm, in that order.

If you are more interested in generating volume to build up your rankings for other programs, I would recommend PsychoHits first, then I would recommend TrafficSwarm to bring more uniques, as they are not going to bring high volume.

Again, that is going to depend on you as the webmaster.

A webmaster with a personal site, and not much to gain from other webmasters looking at their site, or benefit from generating hits to up rankings, is going to be wasting time, IMO, in surfing for traffic which is not really going to bring any benefit.

A webmaster who has affiliates to promote, especially if they have splash pages, or can reap a reward from the traffic generated to their site through other resources can see returns from the use of traffic exchanges.

Aside from LinkReferral which has set up a system which actually gets others to visit your site, most of the traffic generated by these exchanges is empty, meaning that other webmasters are just surfing to get traffic to their sites as well.

Splash pages which grab someone's attention quickly are best for these exchange, or headlines on your site which make someone want to stap and look.

Basically, as the webmaster using the exchange, you are looking to create the equivalent of a traffic wreck, or of a busty blonde flashing her bare breasts; either will get someone to stop and look.

That is entirely dependent on how active I am in any given week. I have not been counting how many hits I have been getting, and I have multiple sites, as many as 8 on one exchange, so it has to be divided among them.

I get enough traffic to keep most of my sites front paged on topsites where they are listed, which helps to get a litttle traffic back from those. I think I offended the owners of two button exchanges when, on one of my sites, I openly recommended using traffic exchanges to drive up hits on button exchanges; neither of them will approve my site, though I keep their button exchanges listed as a resource.

I have joined a relatively new traffic exchange which is looking promising.

For the first 100 members who sign-up, they get a free upgrade to gold membership automatically. I don't know what that means exactly, but for every site I surf, I get twice the traffic back; that's four times more than the standard 2-1 surf ratio tarffic exchange.

You can check it out here: http://ofsgautosurf.com/?ref=30

The site not looking much professional. But I signed under your name.

Hope to get some traffic from there also. Do they have any thing for the referrals ?

There is a link in your control panel for referrals, but it is just a link like the one I posted. I'll check, as I believe they have a manual exchange as well and splash pages for that. If I can find some banners and splash pages, I'll let you know.

As you can see the website is gaining traffic on its own, the posts for money thing is enogh, tho its a little hard, if you can work on the free hosting plans as well it will be gr8.. even have a competition and grand domain names as a prize will get you tons of people..

no need to exchange traffic then

That is a great Idea: Giving domains for competition.

But can you suggest any good competition for this webmaster's site?

We are mainly aiming to make a platform that gives and shares free help and resources with webmasters.

So competitions also supports this aim. Can you suggest any one?

there is the old: 1. Helpful user of the month, as its a helping forum.
also:2. higher number of quality posts
3. Complete New Feature Suggestion
4. Make a thread about a webmastering problem and the best solution wins

5. A competition I want to win, If you like, you can close your free hosting account, and if one of the members (me) owns a free webhost, partner with him to offer quality hosting and you and him can work a away to make use for both sites. That way that other guy wins, and win too and concentrate more on the webmastering forums and getting more traffic for both sites

Sounds interesting..

But we have some problems with the active members.

Surely this site will comes with interesting ideas on future days...

what kind of problems with the active members

Not really certain if you had a point or not.

I've run contests before. One with a full year of premium hosting as the prize; and not one person signed up for that contest.

Running a contest is not a magnet to pull people to your site.

If you use a contest, promote your site not the contest, and use the contest instead to get people to stay on your site.

Another consideration is the prizes.

Consider your target audience. Although there are plenty of webmasters who could probably use a prize of 1 year of hosting, many that would be coming to a webmaster forum would already have that.

What they may not have is scripts, templates, and other goodies to either add to their site or with which they could create a new site.

Free domains are good as many webmasters can always use another domain. I started with two domains myself, and now have over 40.

It's almost like asking yourself if it wouldn't appeal to you then why would it appeal to someone else.

Iven was asking questions in general about the traffic exchanges to get conversation on the topic. I don't believe he was interested in putting the forum on an exchange; at present, the template is a little heavy for loading this forum on many exchanges within the alloted timer.

Traffic exchanges could be used in another way to promote this forum though; and it combines exchanges and contests.

The people who use traffic exchanges are webmasters. Why would anybody else use one anyway? Since this is a forum for webmasters, and webmasters use traffic exchanges, a splash page with a simple design advertising something like 'Win your own fully stocked eBook store' could be effective in getting a webmasters attention with something they don't already have.

Contests are not magic bullets; they don't work on their own. they can, however, be used as part of a good promotion strategy, though, which focuses on the site and not the contest.

I don't agree, this is a new website, if you go to some one and tell him there is that good webmaster website called WMF, he wont come here, he already know a place to get his resources and help, but if you tell him it is good and right now its offering free domains for example he will come just to check the free domains, and that will make him check out the forum and stay.

Otherwise can you tell me how will you get a webmaster who is already reliefed with his resources to come here?

Could you be more specific with which part you do not agree. I wrote a lengthy post touching on various aspects of promoting a website and attracting a target audience.

1) This is not that new of a website. It was not created last week, last month, or even a few months ago. It has been around for a while.

2) You are being quite presumptuous in saying that webmasters know where to get their resources. If they did, they would not being paying $25 and more for the same scripts I give away to others for free. Webmasters are just as dumb as anyone else.

3) You propose telling a webmaster about a freebie, yet I wonder how you are going to do that.

A forum?

That works, provided you have the time to invest, but, depending on how successful that forum is, what would be the incentive for someone coming to your forum?

I came to this forum due to a post on another forum. I actually went to that forum due to the offer to earn a templates package after so many posts. I got my points, but never got my templates package. I no longer visit that forum, but I continue to come to this forum. There is no BS here like at so many other webmaster forums.

4)



The only magic bullet is to use all of the bullets you have. Every resource you have at your disposal is a potentially valuable resource. You could get lucky with a single tactic, but the chances are much better if you combine tactics, because some are simply going to miss their target and you don't want that to be the only one you were using.

1) I know its not new, but the active members are not that many

2) Who said webmaster do that, those are the unpros, any professional webmaster knows how to get everything for free, and completely legal

3) That proves my point, that you got tempteted to go there

4) Thanks

Huh?

How old are you and where did you read such a preposterous statement?

I am 19, and since I was 17 I was able to get every resource I needed for free

bojomojo,

Webmasters normally develop their skills by exchanging or grabbing informations from the net, places like this...

No one knows any thing on his birth. He normally learns more and more from his surrounding environment.

The world of web is a frequently changing place. So it is not possible to get every updated information. Also you need to aware of the facts that going around you. Things like this only possible through webmaster's community. Blog also helps us on this factors.

Yes, i know that for sure, its just all im talking about it driving users to think this is the best

People say that these type traffic exchangers are bad for google adsense. do you know anything about that? is it possible that google adsense can understand if we use traffic exchanger (automati or manual surf no matter) on our websites?