The Truth About Traffic Exchanges
April 11, 2009 by Tim Hicks
Filed under Promoting Your Site
Once you have your new website up and running, it’s only natural that you want to get traffic to it. After all, it’s no fun if you’re the only person who ever sees your site. If your site is business-related, a lack of traffic can be deadly to your business goals. With that in mind, it is easy to see why so many people are attracted to “traffic exchanges.” Sure, the premise looks good. You look at other people’s websites and, in return, they visit yours. What could be wrong with that? Well, actually, there is plenty wrong with that.
You see, it’s not mere traffic that you’re looking for. It is targeted traffic that you want. You want people who visit your site because they want to be there, not just because your site was the next one in rotation. These visitors will not care about the information on your site or (for business sites) what services or products you offer.
What’s worse is that these sites cost you something much more precious than money. They cost you time. Folks, let’s be real here. Time is your most precious commodity. You can always earn more money, but time is not a renewable resource. Once it is gone, it is gone forever.
With most traffic exchanges you look at websites belonging to other exchange members. Once you’ve viewed 2,3 or 5 sites (depending on the exchange), your site is shown to one member. Can you see how this could take a very long time to generate any real traffic. You end up spending time that could be spent productively, and waste it looking at sites on the exchange. It’s almost insulting to realize that you’ve wasted hours to generate a few hundred hits to your site, only to have them be disinterested in your site or, even worse, to be your competition. You have to remember that the other people in the exchange are looking at exchange sites for the same reason you are. . . they want hits on their site.
Now, if your goal is to bump up your Alexa ranking so that you can have some bragging rights for your personal blog, I guess this is OK, but if you’re looking to draw real, targeted and interested visitors, this is not the way to go.
Now, some traffic exchanges offer you the opportunity to buy credits that will get your site shown throughout the exchange without you having to view sites yourself. This is a little bit better because it doesn’t cause you to waste your time, but you are still getting non-targeted traffic and now, you’re paying for it!
No, you’d be better off to take that money and use it to drive targeted traffic to your site via pay-per-click advertising or other, proven techniques.
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