Instant Web Traffic

One of the basic principles of AdSense and all other contextual advertising services is that the number of clicks, therefore revenue, is proportional to the number of visitors. Generating a steady stream of high quality visitors can be a slow process, requiring painstaking effort at search engine optimisation. Human nature being what it is, some people aren't prepared to wait for the spiders to crawl over their site and attract search engine traffic. They want traffic, hopefully ad-clicking traffic, as quickly and easily as possible. There are two main solutions - either use a traffic exchange program or buy traffic to your site.

A word of caution before you read further: Google do not approve of or encourage the use of traffic exchange programs by AdSense publishers. Although they don't approve, the use of traffic exchange programs IS NOT specifically banned by Google. Other contextual advertisers have their own policies, which I suggest you read before using a traffic exchange. I am not aware of any publisher getting into trouble just for using a traffic exchange.

Traffic exchange programs come in all shapes and sizes, but the general idea is always the same. You register with the program, surf a selection of other member's sites and they surf your site in return. Typically you earn credits every time you visit the site of another member, which entitle you to so many visits in return. Your visits to each other member's site are timed so that you don't just click continuously from site to site without looking at the content. Normally you have to spend 20 - 30 seconds on each site visited.

Traffic exchange programs are a useful way of generating extra traffic for a new site, but they are unsustainable in the long term - there is only so much time you can spend surfing for credits each day. Furthermore, most users of these programs are more concerned about boosting their own credit total than actually reading, or clicking, on the content of your site. These programs should only be used with other search engine optimisation techniques, otherwise if you stop surfing you stop getting traffic - it's as simple as that. There are also some unscrupulous traffic exchange sites in the business. I would avoid TrafficSwarm. These sites hammer their members with spam email, constantly try to get their members to pay for an upgrade and direct their members to sites with spy ware and viruses. Luckily the high quality traffic exchange programs, BlogExplosion and BlogMad spring to mind, tend to outnumber the cowboys. These programs carefully vet each site submitted to their directory, don't spam their members and give a good traffic return.

If you haven't got the time or the inclination to sit for hours surfing traffic exchange sites, you can always cut to the chase and buy some traffic for your site. The going rate for traffic is about 1 US cent per hit, and you are guaranteed to get these hits as long as you keep paying for them. You can do the maths on this: a first-time click on an AdSense ad usually attracts a payment of between USD $0.20 and USD $2.00: a well optimised site has an AdSense click-through-rate (CTR) of about 5%, so you will probably make back your money and get a little bit of profit just by buying traffic. Again places like BlogExplosion and BlogMad offer traffic buying options, or do a Google on 'buy website traffic'.

In conclusion, you can get instant traffic for your website quite easily. If you have a lot of spare time and patience you can surf for credits on a traffic exchange program or, if you want results even quicker, you can buy traffic instantly. These methods should be employed alongside traditional methods of promoting your site, and I personally would only use them for a new site until genuine traffic started to arrive.