Many years ago, there was a commercial in which an actor portraying Abraham Lincoln walks into a 'headhunters'(Employment Agency) office, sits down, and hands the agent the application. After looking it over for a few seconds, the man leans back in his chair and says to Lincoln, "well Lincoln, tell me a little about yourself"? Lincoln, with eyes cast down responds hesitatingly, "well, I've done a lot of reading, sort of on my own". The agent leans back in his chair, and then quickly leans forward and looks Lincoln directly in the eyes and says, "Look Lincoln, you know you're a smart guy, and I know you're a smart guy, but without that sheepskin, you ain't going nowhere fellow". It's the same with websites. You can have the most hi-tech website offering the best products going, but without sufficient website traffic, it 'ain't' going nowhere.
When people mention traffic generation you'll usually hear terms like; Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising, Linking, Email Marketing, List Building, Writing Articles and things such as that. While these are all important components to generating traffic they usually all require money and or talent. However, there's another method that people have been using for years to generate lots of FREE traffic to their websites that are called Traffic or Hit Exchanges. Although I've used them for years to generate lots of traffic, I've recently taken a look to see if they're still effective. The answer I've come up with is, yes, and no!
If you're not familiar with a Traffic or Hit Exchange it basically works like this; you look at other websites and in exchange for this, your website(U.R.L) is viewed by others. Usually it's on a 2-1 basis in which for every two times you look at other sites, your site gets viewed by other people once. There's many variations on this, but the basic premise is, you look at other people's sites, and in exchange they look at yours. But just who is looking at your sites?
One of the things that you have to keep in mind when using the Traffic Exchanges is, most people who use Traffic Exchanges are fellow advertisers looking to sell you their program or product. That's one of the reasons it's rather difficult to make most Affiliate Programs work with Traffic Exchanges. When you're just one of hundreds of people trying to sell the same type of program to fellow advertisers, the chances of success are pretty slim. Unless you're one of the first to advertise a program and can hit the exchanges hard, you're not likely to succeed here with Affiliate Programs. How then can you make Traffic Exchanges work for you?
One of things I've found that helps in making the exchanges work is creating your own pages. You don't have to be a website designer to create simple pages or websites these days. There are literally thousands of places to find templates....things that allow you to design pages or websites without having any knowledge of H.T.M.L. By using your own unique pages, you'll have something that's different from the hundreds or thousands of other people advertising the same programs, and uniqueness is a plus with Traffic Exchanges.
Another thing to keep in mind is since most of the people using the Traffic Exchanges are fellow marketers, try to cater a product or service that appeals to them. If you have a product or service that can help these marketers sell their products or programs, then you have a pretty good chance of making some money yourself. For instance, everyone marketing on the Internet is looking for a way to create 'leads'. If you can come up with a program that helps them generate these leads more effectively, you're quite likely to succeed.
Speaking of leads, I've found one of the best uses of Traffic Exchanges is to generate new leads. The process involves creating a page that piques someone's interest, and encourages them to fill in some information, usually an email address and phone number. Once the advertiser has that information, the prospect will be sent a series of emails that basically try to get the prospect to buy the product, service, or business opportunity that the advertiser is marketing. It's the old 'two step' method of marketing except in this case you can largely use automation to do much of the selling or marketing.
There are literally hundreds of Traffic or Hit Exchanges out there on the Internet that will enable you to generate loads of FREE traffic to your site. While not effective for all things, they can be used to generate new business AND money. With a little imagination and some effort, you can develop a virtual non-stop flow of traffic to your website.
Bill Thomas lives in Seattle, Wa. He is actively engaged in E-Commerce and Internet Marketing. His current website is--Build Lifetime Income from Home
