We all want to get more traffic to our websites and blogs and free traffic exchange programs seem to be any easy way to accomplish this goal.
What is a traffic exchange program? You sign up for the program and submit your site. Your site is added to the loop of many other sites. You are required to browse all these sites to accumulate credits. These credits will dictate how many times your site is included in the loop and viewed by others. That is the basic idea of the programs.
There is a lot of controversy out there as to whether these programs work or not. Some people will advise you not to use them and some will recommend them. I have used them in the past but found I did not have the time to surf the sites for hours to get a few credits. For those of you who have not yet used one be sure to check them out thoroughly and read the info below.
The Good
1. More Traffic – They definitely can bring you more traffic. Whether or not this is quality traffic is a subject of debate.
2. Increase Your Networking – You are exposed to other online businesses with which you can network and become connected. With an increased network come the chances of growing your business.
3. Make a Little Money - You can make cash when you refer others to join with your link. If these people upgrade to a paid membership you will receive a small commission.
4. Free – Most of the traffic exchange programs will have a free version with a paid upgrade membership. If you just want free traffic, this is one way to get it.
The Bad
1. Poor Conversion Rates – Although these programs can bring you fast traffic, people have found out that this traffic is not easily converted into sales.
2. Wasted Time – Having to surf all those websites to earn credits can waste precious hours of your time. You are required to stay about 20 seconds on each site so you can do the math to see that it would take hours just to get a good amount of credits.
3. Wasted Effort – As online business owners, we all know how valuable out time is and how much work we have to do in that time. Many people feel that because of the poor quality of traffic and the large amount of time needed to earn credits, participating in these programs is not worth the effort.
The Ugly
1. Cheating – Unfortunately in an effort to get something for nothing, many people have found a way to cheat with these programs. This means even fewer people are seeing your site. There is software that will open the webpages and the person using that software will never see any of the sites. Try converting that into sales!
2. Viruses, Adware and Spyware, Oh My! – Because of the easy access f0r all to these programs it is quite possible to pick up viruses, adware and spyware. One program even had to shut down because of this problem.
So you see, as with anything there are pros and cons. You will need to do your research and decide if the pros are enough of a reward for all that time and work or if the cons are good enough reason to steer clear of these traffic programs.