Internet Marketing Tycoon

**furry** · 09-11-2008, 01:15 PM

I'm hoping this is the right area to ask this question. I've seen references to sites called traffic exchanges, which claim to boost your presense and incoming traffic. They sound like they are offering free advertising for your websites.

Are these a complete waste of time? I am getting a gut feeling they are. I looked a couple of them, and the impression I get is they would do nothing for your traffic, because anyone surfing them would only be on your site for a few seconds, then moving on to the next site.

**vangogh** · 09-11-2008, 07:47 PM

Complete waste of time.

The basic idea is if you visit a bunch of sites the owners of those sites will also visit yours. The problem is none of you are really interested in each other's sites. Everyone is just visiting to earn enough credit to get others to visit their site.

If you're looking for inflated stats traffic exchanges can work wonders. If you're looking for useful traffic the exchanges are worthless.

Sounds like you already knew that, but figured I'd confirm.

**furry** · 09-11-2008, 08:43 PM

Thanks a lot, that's what I thought. I couldn't picture someone searching for something on the net saying to themselves "Well, maybe if I go click thru a traffic exchange I will find it" lol. I can't believe so many of these things exist if their sole purpose is just to artifcially inflate traffic stats.

**Learning Newbie** · 09-11-2008, 09:30 PM

I think the miracle people hope for is that John Doe will join a traffic exchange for whatever dumb reason, not to look for your product, but will be so blown away when he finds it, that he'll stop what he was doing and buy from you. Which is pretty unlikely, even if you're Steve Jobs. How are you going to stand out to an overly tired person who's visiting 300 or 3,000 web sites today as part of the traffic exchange?

I've been doing a bit of automated web crawler programming, so I could always whip up something to make the computer request your URL a million times, and promptly ignore the result. On an off topic rant, tho, why is it only the Internet Explorer and not Mozilla browser we have access to from C#?

**francis84** · 09-12-2008, 12:08 AM

I had tried many traffic exchange... and it brought out no goods to my website.

**johniman7** · 09-12-2008, 12:17 AM

IMO since most people who are using that type of program is ready to try anything to make money those click exchanges are a good place to promote "get rich quick" type affiliate links.

**vangogh** · 09-12-2008, 08:27 PM

John I can see your logic with the get rich quick ideas. Still I wonder how successful it would be. I think most people joining traffic exchanges are much more interested in selling their product than even noticing what else is for sale.

Granted I have no experience with them and I could see where a get rich quick scheme might do well.

**furry** · 09-12-2008, 08:53 PM

But even with a get rich quick scheme, wouldn't a traffic exchange still be pointless? Everyone else surfing at the traffic exchange is doing what you are doing, earning points or buxs or funny money to get their own ads displayed. No one would actually be interested in what they are viewing, they are just clicking away themselves.

**vangogh** · 09-12-2008, 09:40 PM

I think the idea is that since most people joining traffic exchanges are looking to shortcut their way to the top they'd be more likely to be interested in 'get rich quick' schemes and so would take more notice and possibly buy.

I'm thinking like you that they'd still just be interested in earning the surfing points and wouldn't notice anything on the sites, but I think it is possibly they would be more susceptible to 'get rich quick' ideas.

**gdiwin** · 09-13-2008, 09:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by furry

I'm hoping this is the right area to ask this question. I've seen references to sites called traffic exchanges, which claim to boost your presense and incoming traffic. They sound like they are offering free advertising for your websites.

Are these a complete waste of time? I am getting a gut feeling they are. I looked a couple of them, and the impression I get is they would do nothing for your traffic, because anyone surfing them would only be on your site for a few seconds, then moving on to the next site.

Never ever get involved in traffic exchanges. If there's something good in it, it would be to practise clicking your mouse.