How to Use Traffic Exchanges Effectively

Traffic Exchanges: Love them or hate them.  Why would you use them? Well, it is mostly effective if you have a website that you want to rank higher in the Search Engines and a perfect place to get more hits is at a Traffic Exchange. You might also want to use Traffic Exchanges to get customers for your products or recruits for your program. But you will find with Traffic Exchanges that other people are in there trying to put their opportunity in front of you, and you might wonder if there is any point to it, and whether you are just wasting your time. You will probably find that it is the same as with anything in life: You will have those who are successful, and those who don’t make a dime, saying that it obviously doesn’t work.

As with any of your other Marketing Efforts, you need to actually put some effort and time into promoting via traffic exchanges. It is best to use your time wisely and surf several exchanges at once.  This is easily done with the Mozilla FireFox Browser, where you can have several surf pages open at once with tabs at the top.  Plus if you store the surf pages of all your exchanges in one bookmarks folder then you can launch them all at once by selecting "Open in Tabs".

However, the best way to stay organised with Traffic Exchanges is to store them all in an Excel Spreadsheet. Make six columns with the following Headings:

Exchange Name:  The name of the Traffic Exchange

Referral URL: The URL you would use to refer others

Startpage/login URL: Some Traffic Exchanges let you surf without login in

Username: Your ID or username

Password:  your password to the site

Schedule: List the day you will login and assign credits for each site.

You will make your schedule depending on how many days you have available to do your surfing. I suggest that you do an hour twice a week, and select 10 of the best performing Traffic Exchanges. By making sure your pages are seen 24/7 on just 10 exchanges, your sign up rate will skyrocket. For the latest testing for the top exchanges see the Traffic Hoopla link below.  I would also suggest that you include in your top ten one of these new traffic exchanges, which is part of a network of over 500 exchanges, ranging from 300 to 5000 members each. So you get 500 for the price of one, so to speak, as your website is seen on all of these.

You need to treat your Traffic Exchange surfing as a serious part of your business. Surfing 5 – 10 minutes a day will therefore not be enough. You need to be consistent and surf regularly for about an hour a day for your page to get regular exposure to others. There are two ways to get a lot of exposure on Traffic Exchanges: Surf a lot or purchase credits. You can also upgrade and will triple your efforts doing that as you will get a higher surf ratio and more credits if you refer someone. So the best scenario would be to do all three.

Another good way to get more credits is to make referrals. You can have a splash page, like the one at Traffic Hoopla to advertise for referrals. If a Traffic Exchange gives you a way to communicate with your referrals, use it. You should send your new referral a welcome message, with a way to contact you if they need assistance. You never know, you might make a loyal team member who will follow you in other ventures. Always remember to use your signature file at the end of your message.

So, what else should you promote? The lovely corporate pages of your business might look good on a traffic exchange, and you might want to use traffic exchanges for your corporate website to get more hits and rank higher in the search engines. However, as everyone is there to promote his or her opportunity, you wouldn’t get many sign-ups from that effort. The best thing to do is not to use your corporate website at all, but a cleverly designed splash page used to capture leads, as very few of us are ready to buy something the first time we see an ad. An effective page is a very simple lead gathering page such as a generic recruitment one or a customer prospecting one. You can design the first one to be totally company independent so that when somebody contacts you through it you can discuss what's best for them in person. They also get directed to your site afterwards to read at their leisure. A Lead Capture Page offers people a valuable free information product, such as an e-book or video in exchange for signing up from your link. To put it simply; that's the key to effective advertising in the exchanges. You only have around 20-30 seconds to grab someone's attention so come up with something different; something amusing or topical. Stop wasting your traffic and start using your traffic to build your list.

Many Traffic Exchanges provide features that aren’t being fully utilised by Traffic Exchange Members. These features are there to assist you in your promotional efforts. Features like the way-station, where you can set your pages to show one after the other in succession so that it gets maximum exposure. Or you can have your splash page and your banner linked so that they show simultaneously. You should take advantage of all these features that exchanges provide. They are there to help you gain more exposure to your product of service, and provide you with a way to mentor your downline.

Did you know that Traffic Exchanges are one of the very best ways on the web to exploit the benefits of banner promotion? According to Tim Whiston, a writer and entrepreneur who has been involved with Internet Marketing since 2003, this is true. A well designed banner placed on the surf bar or within the members area can generate loads of very targeted traffic for your site. Text banners are especially effective. If you haven’t been taking advantage of the banner rotation offered by your favourite exchanges, you should do so right away. A strong banner campaign can produce some very favourable results.

It is very important to stand out from the crowd. You can do this by not only using a well designed splash page, but also a customised page that personalise the site for the viewer. For example at TrafficSwarm you can use a splash page specifically designed for and addressing “TrafficSwarm Users.”

You have to keep working at your advertising. Long term success will be yours if you consistently and regularly advertise, because you are keeping your business name in front of people for an extended period of time. Always check what other people are promoting and how they are doing it. Not only can you get ideas for your own advertising, but you can get ideas on website design, headlines and images. Make sure your face or logo is on every banner or splash page you promote. By doing this, people will see the same picture over and over again, and this will stick in their mind. Just like Coke promote themselves by making sure you don’t forget their logo. The longer you do this, the more results you will get. Traffic Exchanges are a long term project, not a short term one. If you stop promoting after a few days and proclaim: “This doesn’t work!” guess what …. You’re right!

The importance of tracking your ads when using Traffic Exchanges cannot be overemphasized. I mentioned Traffic Hoopla before, which tests effectiveness, but only you can find what works for you by tracking your own results.

Being a member of a mixture of about 10 well chosen Traffic Exchanges give you free advertising which can be an effective way of advertising and marketing if you work it correctly. Are you going to be part of the Internet Marketing Statistics? Which part are you … the 95% who fail, or the 5% who succeed? It is up to you.