Simply Traffic Exchanges are  websites that let Internet marketers earn credits by viewing the websites of other members on the traffic exchange. The more pages you view, the more credits you earn, and the more often your page will appear in rotation on the Traffic Exchange.

There are dozens of people for who Traffic Exchanges don’t work, with the amount of members in most exchanges it ought to be very successful. The error that most people make when using a traffic exchange is that they try to sell products and services, but seldom are they successful since members are there surfing for credits to show their own pages.

What you need to be doing is showing your squeeze page for your valuable free offer, this then produces a significant change in the members mentality as it barely interupts their own goals of surfing for credits. If your free offer is perceived to be sufficiently valuable enough, you will have targeted visitors signing up for your list.

With so many members, traffic exchanges can provide you with 700 to 800 visitors viewing your page each and every week for around 25 minutes of your time surfing daily.

When you convince other people to sign up for the same traffic exchange through your link, you will receive additional bonus credits for your squeeze page, either as a one off amount of credits or based on the amount of pages they view when they use the traffic exchange you introduced them to.

Clearly, with some work and a well targeted free offer, you can easily develop a powerful stream of targeted visitors who will sign up to your list.

Join some of the leading traffic exchanges, they are free to join and add another traffic source for you to build your list. Here are a couple to get you started:

Bootscootin Traffic
Traffic Witch
Traffic Splash
Gladiator Hits

For the top Traffic Exchanges go to Affiliate Funnel. They publish a list every week of the top exchanges over the previous week.

There are two types of Traffic Exchange that you will find on the internet, manual and auto surf traffic exchange sites. The manual sites require you to literally click a button to go to the next site, while the auto surf ones scroll through the sites automatically. If you’ve got repetitive strain injuries, the second is definitely the way to go!

Why traffic exchanges are good

Traffic exchanges can attract more eye balls to your website and more clicks on your site, which can help improve your ranking in the search engines. The more people who are visiting your site, the more the search engines will view your site as popular, and up the rankings your site will go.

This means when people are searching for your keyword terms, they’ll be more likely to find your website if you’ve been able to rise towards the top of the search engine listings. Naturally getting clicks through a link exchange is no substitute for having a website that is well written and high quality, that is optimized for those keyword terms properly.

Attracting other members into traffic exchanges will also earn you a small percentage of these members surfing credits. If you get enough members signing up under you, you can replace your surfing credits with those earnt through your downline. You will also receive a one off credit amount for each member who signs up under you.

Why traffic exchanges are bad

The main problem with the free traffic exchanges is that you have to spend time clicking on other people’s pages to view them in order to earn credits that get people to view your page. This can be time consuming—and not a lot of fun—if the sites aren’t things you are interested in. The way you feel when you have to take time out of your day to click on pages in the traffic exchange is probably the way that the majority of the other people there feel—they’re just trying to get clicks to their own site.

Most people in all probability won’t spend a lot of time on your site, and you won’t make many sales from traffic exchanges.

Why bother with Trffic Exchanges?

You may well be wondering why anyone would bother with traffic exchanges. They seem like a lot of time for little return, time that could be better used in developing new products or writing e-mails to build your relationship with your current customers.

The time involved in viewing other pages and clicking on links is the biggest downside of traffic exchanges.  But the amount of traffic you get in exchange for your time can be significant, and there are a sure to be some of those visitors that will be interested in what you have to offer. If you don’t want to surf you can usually purchase credits quite cheaply.

Ultimately, you have to determine if this is something you want to utilize, but there are definite positives, especially for the new Internet marketer who doesn’t have a big advertising budget but wants to draw traffic to his or her site.

Affiliate Funnel publishes a list of the top Traffic Exchanges each week along with their seminar every Saturday where you can get lots more tips.

• Trade links with other web sites. They should be related to the subject of your web site. Instead of trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half page ads, classified ads, etc.

• Start an e-zine for your web site. When people read each issue they’ll be reminded to revisit your web site. They’ll see your product ad more than just once which will increase your orders.

• Form an online community. It could be an online message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community they will regularly return to communicate with others.

• Write articles and submit them to e-zines, websites and magazines that accept article submissions. Include your business information and web address at the end of the article.

• Give away an electronic freebie with your ad on it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away. This’ll increase your ad exposure and attract people to your web site at the same time.

• Combine your products or services into one big package deal with other businesses offerings. You could share a web site and advertise the package deal; which means double the traffic.

• Submit your freebie to the online directories that list your particular item or service for free. If you’re offering a free e-zine, submit it to all the free e-zine directories on the internet.

• Participate on message boards. Post answers to other people’s questions, ask questions and post appropriate information. Include your signature file at the end of all your postings.

• Exchange classified or sponsor ads with other free e-zine publishers. If there is a huge subscriber difference between e-zines, one can run more ads to make up for it.

• Post your ad on free advertising areas on the internet. You can post it on free classified ad sites, free for all links sites, newsgroups that allow ads, free yellow page directories, etc.

Maybe you’re suffering from from information overload listening to all the latest free website traffic tactics and not being able to understand or implement any of it. Website traffic is a very cost effective form of marketing, it requires consistant and ongoing effort and commitment. There are a lot of high-impact, low-cost things you can do to get started.

You can employ website traffic tactics without spending dime. However, knowing how is the real deal. Here’s the score:

1. Link it

Of all the effective website traffic tactics that can get you best results, linking to and from other websites is the one of the most widely-used method. Just make sure that the Internet business you are exchanging links with is related to your own business. And of course, don’t overkill as this might ban you from search engines. Instead of trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half
page ads, classified ads, etc.

Link exchanges may also be included into the list of strategies and tactics to get more website traffic. A link exchange gives your site more credit, and because your site gets more credit, it receives more website traffic. Investing some time in searching for partners in link exchange programs pays of well in more website traffic. Link exchange will give more website traffic in case if the partners in link exchange are even more credible then you are.

2. Keyword-rich AND sensible content

Writing or acquiring articles that provide solid information regarding your business is one of the best ways. Precise keyword selection is one of the keys to getting more traffic, specifically to getting more targeted traffic. Making use of free keyword suggestion tools such as Google’s keyword tool will help you on which keyword or phrases to work on to better target more traffic to your website. Making these articles very readable and genuinely informative will make you many repeat visitors and subsequently to become repeat customers.

A great way to do this is through article writing and submission. Submitting these articles to various article directory listings, such as ezine articles will provide more visibility for your business. By adding an optimised link to your resource box at the bottom of your article you could create for yourself numerous back links and in turn generate more traffic to your site.

3. Meta Tags

Another way to acquire more traffic for your website is through having your Meta tags contain your keywords and description that targets your business. Meta tags help search engines in describing your web page. If you’re handy with the HTML aspect of your web pages, manipulating your meta tags would be a breeze.

4. Web 2.0

Web 2.0 or Social media can be anything from blogs to social networking websites and bookmark sharing services. While email marketing remains an effective way to drive visitors to your website, more and more businesses are leveraging web 2.0 to increase traffic and brand awareness. Don’t be afraid to start small with one set of applications before trying something else. Social bookmarking websites are a great place to begin.

You can use some of these social networking websites to increase web traffic like facebook, myspace, linkedin or twitter you can list your domain name in your profile. In addition to attracting website traffic from these large social networks there are other additional benefits associated with getting incoming links from these high search engine ranked sites.

The inclusion of a business blog on a website lets you build a personal relationship with your customers. A regularly updated blog will keep your visitors returning to your website over and over again.

Website traffic is more than just a numbers game. In order to succeed online, you must get quality targeted traffic. These methods, if employed properly, will not only increase your traffic and make your web site more popular but will allow you to achieve your desired outcome – a higher conversion rate.

By signing up for a free blogging web site, you may find it easier to get listed in search engines than you would if you were starting your own blog from scratch. For example, google runs the free blog hosting site blogger.com and crawls its pages reguarly looking for updated pages, so if you have your site hosted by blogger you are almost guaranteed to be listed on google’s blog search engine. This easy access to search engines can take some of the work out of promoting your blog, and can give you an advantage in gaining a following with a minimum of effort.

If your blog pulls in a large readership, you may wish to consider moving your site. A lot of people feel that being hosted by a free blogging service gives a blog a sort of amateur feel that is fine for a new member of the blogosphere, but is not suited to a high-profile blog. Having your own domain and hosting can help you make your blog feel professional, and finding a company that will host your domain is not difficult or expensive. Once your blog takes off, you will in all likelihood be able to sell enough advertising space to be able to afford to purchase a domain and pay for a hosting package, and still have money left over. However, it doesn’t make sense in most cases to invest in these glossy luxuries before you have a respectable sized readership.

Beginning your blog with a free blogging site is a great way to build a following before you spend any money on your blog. If and when your blog becomes popular and you are ready to take the next step and purchase your own domain, your readers will follow you to your new home. The fact that it is possible to use a free blog host like LiveJournal.com, Blogger.com, or Wordpress.com as a kind of incubator for your blog is great news for bloggers everywhere.

If you decide at a later date to install your own hosted wordpress blog you will be able to import your posts into your new blog from some free blogging platforms. If it is likely that you will want to host your own blog eventually both Blogger and LiveJournal are capable of achieving this, although with LiveJournal you cannot import comments.

Consider using Blogger.com or Wordpress.com to start your free hosted blog today.

If you are using traffic exchanges you need to use a fast loading squeeze page with your opt-in form in a prominant position, a catchy headline, may be a graphic and 4 -6 bullet points stating the benefits of the program you are promoting.

Remember your page will only be viewed for a short period of time on a traffic exchange, as most surfers who are also members of traffic exchanges are looking for more traffic!

They will mostly be using a tabbed browser, surfing to gain credits to advertise their own pages. So you should be using at least 50% of your traffic exchange promotion promoting other traffic programs, this will build your downlines in your other TE programs and you will earn credits from refering people to a program as well as off of their surfing. Initially you will need to spend time surfing in the exchanges to gain credits.

The majority of these programs are free to join and allow you to email your downline, this is where you can promote your own product, affiliate products or other opportunities and exchanges. Always make sure you maximise the downline builder in any TE you join by filling in your affiliate details for all the exchanges you are a member of, and consider joining any you are not currently a member of so as you build your downlines these members are signing up at other exchanges in the downline builder through your links.

Other ways to build your traffic exchange downlines can include emailing to your own list, write and submit some articles, or write a post on your blog reviewing a Traffic Exchange you wish to promote. The larger you build your downlines, the more credits you will earn, this will allow you to divert your time to work on your next traffic building strategy.

Traffic exchanges are a great place to get free traffic and start building your own list, and should be used as part of your overall Traffic Strategy.

1.    Create high quality posts that are rich with your keywords and phrases. This brings two main benefits. First, high quality and useful content will keep your website’s visitors interested and they will return and visit your blog on a regular basis and will purchase the products you sell on your website. Second, fresh content with your key words will increase your search engine ranking which brings targeted traffic to your blog and website.

2.    Optimizing your titles for search engines is also a very effectual way to drive traffic to your website. You will need to optimize your blog post titles and use all the keywords or phrases which people use while searching for information on the internet. This will make your website visible on search engines, and your website will also rank high for all your keywords, driving traffic to your blog or website. Install the All in one SEO plugin for improved search engine optimization.

3.    Use email marketing with your blog. This is an effective way of bringing readers back to your blog as well as to create an opt-in list. Building your own opt-in list is important because you can sell your products and services to your list. By using an autoresponder, you can send emails to your list about updates to your blog, hence driving repeat traffic to your blog.

4.    Social book marking is yet another powerful way to drive traffic to your blog. If you don’t know how to use them then most of them have good video tutorials to show you how to use their programs. If you rank high on some of the most popular social book marking sites, you can drive large volumes of traffic to your website.

5.    RSS feed for blog traffic. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed is another way you can use to keep people coming back to your blog because after people subscribe to read your RSS feed, they will recieve updates whenever you update your blog. This way you can attract readers back to your blog every time you make a new blog post. Use the Feedburner plugin to reach a larger audience.

6.    You can use some of your blog posts and covert them into articles. All you have to do is to add more content to your blog posts if necessary, add a catchy keyword optimized article title, add your resource box and convert it into an article. Writing and submitting articles is one of the most fantastic and long term strategies for traffic generation.

Irrespective of the size of your budget you can significantly increase the volume of traffic using these six strategies to drive traffic to your blog or website.

One of the questions all web site owners want answering is – how to increase web traffic?

All web site owners want an increase in traffic, a web site is virtually invisible without traffic, and will find it very difficult to make any money. Here are some of the vital steps you can take to attract targeted traffic to your web site. Newbies attempting to make it in internet marketing often make the error of trying to get masses of traffic and therefore they get themselves into programs that often sends tens of thousands of hits to their site, but the majority of them are untargeted hits. This results in frustration because they don’t manage to achieve any sales and they give up the idea they could ever make a  success of an online business.

Using Pay per Click is a very effective way to get targeted traffic, but it is not free, takes time to research and  set up a successful campaign. You will pay to increase your rank for various keywords used in PPC marketing.

Many marketers have to come to the conclusion that what they need is targeted traffic, where the viewers of their web site are interested visitors, not visitors forced by some traffic generating system to enter their site.

Here are 4 steps you can follow to increase your web traffic:

Adding content

Using a blog to add high quality and relevant content to your site makes an ideal tool to constantly increase traffic, and keep your subscribers updated. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo provide the highest page position to the most relevant site for the given keyword. So your content needs to be well thought out and contain the relevant keywords for the products and services you are selling or providing many times throughout the article, but remaining easily readable.

Creating content material

While you are researching your articles for your site, there are many others out there looking for content to publish on their own site. Writing some articles for use by others in newsletters and ezines will enable you to attract traffic from other marketers lists to your site, be sure that you include a bio or resource link to your site on every article you provide.

Affiliate program

Set up an affiliate program for your products or services. This will allow you to give part of your profit to those who help you sell. In a short amount of time you can get a true army of affiliates promoting your web site that will advertise and send traffic to you. This is not just done on the internet but it is also done by large companies offline companies too.

Write reports

Write short reports that are on topic with your product or service, give them away for free with your links inside. Make them rebrandable for your affiliates to give away, make sure your name and website are included on the first page of the report.

This short article gives you four steps for more web site traffic to effectivly increase your site visitors at minimum cost if you don’t want to use costly PPC methods to advertise.

Further reading:

How to get traffic to your website