Traffic Exchanges - To Use Or Not To Use?

Once upon a time there was a "brilliant" marketing mind who came up with the following idea:

"Wouldn't it be great if I could advertise to all those people who log on to the Internet every single day, start up their web browser and have set their browser's home or start page to a special Internet address, the address / URL of MY website? Of course, this will not attract many people, folks won't love it if I try to sell them, they need an incentive to view all the ads, so what if they get credit for viewing an ad? Yes, I think this is going to work. I will start up a free service consisting of a group of advertisers where all members are credited just for viewing other members' ads and in exchange their ads are also shown on the network. My service is free to join so it will attract loads of members even though they are all ADVERTISERS."

This brainchild was the birth of traffic exchanges aka startpage programs and since that time they have been springing up like mushrooms all over the net. Hardly a day goes by they don't suck in newbies like a Texas twister.

Why are they so popular?

First and foremost, they are free to join and offer any aspiring or wannabe Internet marketer with no advertising budget an opportunity to promote their business or affiliate program for free. So why not give it a try.

You hopefully join the program, enter the URL (link) of your affiliate program you'd like to be seen by other members, choose a unique user name that identifies you (unless it's automatically generated) and then you click "submit."

But are you aware that all other members of the traffic exchange have done the exact same thing? Yes, all these advertisers have the URLs for THEIR ad pages listed in the exchange, too. Welcome to the club! You are now in a "pool" of advertisers. Just think about it and breathe it in! You are not advertising to normal folks or real surfers, you are advertising to ADVERTISERS!

And 99% of them are from the "get rich quick brigade" trying to promote another person's affiliate program or "cookie cutter page," you know that nice looking and self-replicating page all affiliates are given as a "promotional tool" after joining. Very unlikely that the affiliate program you belong to hasn't been seen yet by all other members unless it's brand new.

But you still believe you can make money on the net, so you keep trying and viewing other members' websites / affiliate pages in exchange for traffic. Traffic exchange rates vary, but typically you are required to view 2 exchange members' ads each for 30 seconds to receive 2 credits or 1 hit to your ad page. That's 60 seconds for just one hit or 1 hour of your life clicking for only 60 hits.

Soon you'll realize you have to click your little heart away to get a single sale or sign-up for your affiliate program. So you listen to some self-proclaimed "startpage gurus" who tell you that you have to join a bunch of other traffic exchanges and use "turbo surf tools" like "tabbed browsing" to get the most out of your surfing efforts and reach as many potential customers as you can.

But the sales are still not pouring in. So you begin to apply some gurus' "startpage secrets" and set up nice little attention-grabbing "lead capture pages." You already know it's virtually impossible to make a single sale on traffic exchanges so you go for your visitors' email address and offer a valuable freebie that meets the needs of advertisers.

Now you have a nice contact list and you think your prospects are far more likely to buy something if you build a "relationship." So you follow up and follow up, send them useful educational articles and a offer once in a while, and you know what? They are still reluctant to buy anything.

And that's no surprise. They are on your list just because of your freebie. Nearly all traffic exchange members are FREE members, and the ONLY reason they joined is to show THEIR ads to YOU -- for FREE! They joined for free because they have no money to spend on advertising. And the pro / paid members (less than 1%) who can shell out money never see your page because they don't need to surf.

So, in a nutshell, here is what traffic exchanges aren't telling you:

* ALL members are ADVERTISERS.

* ALL members are looking at the ads of OTHER ADVERTISERS.

* ALL members are NOT INTERESTED in seeing OTHER ADVERTISERS' ADS.

This is the brutal reality. All members are trying to sell you something even if they offer you something for free using the "soft sell approach." And did I mention that the majority are NOT webmasters? These folks are unable to create unique content or ad pages and do NOTHING to differentiate themselves from all the others trying to sell the same thing. Their favorite keyboard keys are CTRL-C and CTRL-V to copy and paste their affiliate / reseller link. So most members see the same ads over and over again.

I am sure all traffic exchanges wouldn't exist any longer if all members were required NOT to submit an affiliate link but a unique website. They simply had to close their gates because they wouldn't get enough members.

Please, do yourself a favour and STOP using traffic exchanges. All you get in return is untargeted traffic. The only person that wins is the traffic exchange owner selling "guaranteed hits" packages to some poor souls. As you already know, these hits won't do much for your business but lots of frustration and disappointment.