My final thought about traffic exchanges..

Discussion in 'General Advice' started by talfighel, Aug 19, 2012.

  1. talfighel

    talfighel Silver Member

    OK, so not everyone on this forum knows me. I have tested many ways that one can use to market their online home business on the internet. Some work and some don't.

    The one thing I see a lot of discussion about are traffic exchange websites and whether they work or not.

    I am going to be 100% honest with you guys and ladies.

    These websites have no real value when you are trying to build your business online. See, every other member that is on that site wants the same thing as you and that is more traffic, more signups, and more sales.

    I have taken my ads that I use on different PAID advertising and have generated a nice amount of leads to my business. Then I took the same ads and got like 1000+ "visitors" from traffic exchange websites. How many signups or subscribers did I get from that? 0. Nothing.

    Just because one of your mentors is saying that they have used this kind of system for years and recommend it to you, does not mean that it is any good. See, most of the gurus online who recommend them have one thing in common with these websites. They will "promote" them to their team because they know that that traffic exchange site will be promoting their program for them. So it is a win win situation for both but they know that they are lying to other people.

    Kind of like:

    "I will promote for you if you do the same for me" mentality.

    So if you are using these websites for traffic then stop right now.

    If you do want good and targeted traffic to your site or business/affiliate link, then use these:

    PPC
    Article marketing
    Video marketing
    Forum posting.
    Ezine ads
    Do SEO but don't fret about it.

    Tal
    Vishal P. Rao and payment proof like this.
  2. payment proof

    payment proof Active Member

    I agree Tal. Traffic from traffic exchanges is horrible and ultra low quality. People are there to get traffic to their own sites, not to look at yours.
  3. Just2EZ

    Just2EZ Moderator

    The original purpose of traffic exchanges was to boost Alexa rankings, not sales or conversions.
    It still serves that purpose but Alexa rankings mean little in terms of making money.
    If all you want is ANY traffic then you do get that.
    Alexa does count when selling a domain name.
  4. Jeanny

    Jeanny New Member

    The original purpose of traffic exchanges was to boost Alexa rankings, not sales or conversions.
    It still serves that purpose but Alexa rankings mean little in terms of making money.
    If all you want is ANY traffic then you do get that.
    Alexa does count when selling a domain name.

    So how to get a good Alexa ranking then?
  5. payment proof

    payment proof Active Member

    Very well said. I've always been more concerned with quality traffic and conversions. If an increase in Alexa rankings follows those efforts, that's great. If not, quality traffic and conversions are still a great thing. :)
  6. FreeCashMan

    FreeCashMan Active Member

    What is said is that people join a home business and then go to traffic exchanges and get poor to no results and then say a biz does not work. Well one can't use poor advertising and marketing methods and expect positive results.

    If there was one form of advertising I could do without it's traffic exchanges. However some have made it work for them with certain types of income opportunities.
  7. annadenise

    annadenise Member

    I agree that traffic exchanges do very little to nothing to get one's business and FreeCashMan's comments above are right on, except I personally have never seen it work for anyone. When I was still working in corporate america and first started looking at online business' this is one of the first things alot of us will typically run into when getting started. I remember going to these exchanges daily for a while. Then I got more experienced and realized it was a waste of my time.
  8. Lexii0302

    Lexii0302 New Member

    So what would be an alternative to the traffic exchange? I am new to the online business/ marketing so I'm trying to avoid all the scams. How do you generate traffic to your website?
  9. Wayne Miller

    Wayne Miller Member

    It's true that a lot of traffic exchanges generate traffic that doesn't convert! However in my opinion they still have value and you should still belong to some. Why? Because in order to do well in the site rankings one of the things you need is traffic. Find a way to keep people on your site for three minutes and you'll do well in the rankings whether they buy or not. Why does that matter? Because if you do well in the rankings, search engines like Google will send you people who do buy. So send people to your site as often as possible and be glad they came even if they don't buy. Also even people who don't buy talk to other people. Hey, I was on this site the other day and guess what they had to offer? That's the best advertising you can get and that's why you should listen to me!
  10. yahia

    yahia Member

    Ok traffic exchanges are horrible for building a business, but can make you some money. I knew about them as you said Tal from my recruiter to one of the biz opps back in 2006. (Ok I wasn't born an IMer :oops: ). I built a downline in some of them and they still accumulate credit for me until today so I don't have to do much of clicking on my own.

    In terms of business building I was getting a lead every 100 visits, not much, not too bad, but they rarely converted into paid members in my biz opp back then, so I stopped. I also stopped doing any MLM alltogether.

    Last year in the summer I found that I have a ton of credit in some of those so I decided to test it for some biz opps that pay per lead. I took the splash pages I was using for PPV and modified them a bit to suit the mentality of a traffic exchange user.

    From two splash pages I generated $399 in the month of August and I don't remembr the number exactly in the month of September, around half that.

    To my knowledge (and I may be wrong) this is as far as traffic exchcange programs could go. Maybe if I change the splash pages and the biz opp offer itself every month it might keep making the same money, for some this could cover the car payment and the gas or a nice vacation at the end of the year.

    You know what ... I'll just go ahead and do that. The credit is there and it might take me 15 minutes to set up this month's campaign. If it still works I'll come back to post the results.
  11. talfighel

    talfighel Silver Member


    You can use pay per click, article marketing, forum marketing, find high traffic websites in your niche and place an ad on their site for a fee, find newsletters that you can place your ad for, do a little SEO.

    Paid ads gets you faster results.
  12. tkyles1009

    tkyles1009 Member

    Well, I've never tried a traffic exchange before I have considered it but never followed through and you've given me something to think about seriously.

    I normally stick to the ones you've listed below along with jv giveaways which is pretty awesome too!:)
  13. Jacq1292

    Jacq1292 Member

    I agree that the traffic is very poor quality compared to other methods, but it can be of value, especially if you use an eye catching splash page and something unique. Repetition is also key..how many times have you seen a site before you finally clicked on it. Promotion will help you, and for sites that pay for a certain number of views, it is easier to get signups. ts. I use traffic exchanges, but I would not depend on them alone. I also like the sites that allow country targetting.
  14. gowriter

    gowriter Member

    No, don't aim low. Traffic exchanges are good for promoting other traffic exchanges. That's about it. Been there. Envision your ideal customer and aim for them.
  15. yahia

    yahia Member

    Ok here is the result of my experiment.

    In my post above I said I made around $399 in one month from promoting a couple of splash pages on traffic exchange programs linking to a CPA product. I updated those pages with new affiliate links and made some changes to make them look different while keeping all the basic elements the same (The headline, the picture, and the call to action).

    The result is $33.70 in commission in one month.

    These results are really disappointing considering the amount of credit assigned to those promotions. If someone is clicking for that amout of credit it would've taken them at least 3 hours every day for a month to keep the traffic going and end up with less than the minimum wage for 4 hours.

    I have to admit here that I didn't do any tweaking and didn't try to split test anything. If I have time this month I'll take it seriously and do the throw-and-stick technique with some offers to see if this can be restored as a source of free income for those who have no other choices.
  16. crisstar

    crisstar Member

    I've had success years back with traffic exchanges... that's because I was building just a list - albeit it wasn't a high quality list, but it was a list nonetheless.

    Traffic exchanges are a lower kind of traffic because the people using T.E.'s are on there because they want to promote their business and of course in order to do that they have to look at yours.

    With this kind of traffic either build a list and sell products that appeal to this group of people - think of their mindset. Like gowriter said, promote things you know they're already interested i.e. other traffic exchanges, etc...

    There's a marketer named Jason Cardamone (I think I spelled his name right) who built a business using traffic exchanges. Now that's not the norm, and his landing page he used was quite unusual than the typical site you saw in T.E.'s back then. I don't think he's using T.E.'s anymore, but for some reason it worked for him in the past.
  17. annie800

    annie800 New Member

    I use traffic exchanges all the time. I've received a few referrals, but the main reason I use them is to brand myself. Get myself known on the web. I also get an idea of what other marketers are doing in promotions and it gives me more ideas for promotions.
  18. getagrip

    getagrip Gold Member

    I've never used traffic exchanges, in part, because I never understood 100% what they were about, but also because they seemed similar to the idea of link exchanges. The idea of trying to improve your SEO ranking by building two way links seemed stupid and counter productive. In some cases it made since to do, like when helping out a friend just by having a link to his site on your site, but not for SEO purposes. Anyway, Tal, I'm glad you tested the idea out. In your case, your test confirmed my suspicions about what I already believed about link exchanges, but its always good when your suspicions are confirmed with actual test data, rather than someone's uninformed opinion.
  19. Cristi Doncea

    Cristi Doncea New Member

    That is exactly the same with free solo ads. I've been trying them to see how better they are. I got a lot of clicks but no sign ups, so i don't recommend it, it is just like traffic exchange, people send ads just for their business.
  20. Jacq1292

    Jacq1292 Member

    You will see a lot of traffic exchanges being promoted, but I had success with getting almost all of my signups to a free to join program just using traffic exchanges. I also use them now with my Ebay listings because I have many attractive low-priced (and some just about giveaway items) I've found the traffic exchanges to be a good place to advertise, but I target US only. For building a list, traffic exchanges are also good. Again, eye catching splash page and an attractive offer or giveaway.

Share This Page