Question by Terrah’s Dawn :
What do you know about Traffic Exchanges like Dragon Surf, Surf4theEarth, Traffic-Crypts etc… I’m trying them out now. I can’t seem to get useful info on how to make real money with them. Some claim up to $200 a day with this stuff. Just wondering if you know anything about them. Thanx again Mr. Javo for another great blog. (yes I’m a subscriber)
Ok Terrah, that’s a good question about blogging. Over the web there is a lot of programs to exchange traffic, I mean that with those programs you can get traffic to your website for free, but how them works?
Programs like EasyHits4You, Surf4TheEarh, DragonSurf, LinkReferral…brings you unique visitors daily because they all use a ranking system. This system is basically an “slave measurer” and I say “slave” because in these programs, to be ranked higher you need to -for example- visit 30 sites daily, review 5 of them and add 2 to your favorites. So by doing this everyday you get ranked in the top, bringing you the most of traffic to your website….but imagine to do that everyday with 5 exchange traffic programs?
It Worth?? I don’t think so.
In addition, I think that all those “visits” doesn’t worth. To be ranked higher, the people visit your site for 20 sec or something like that…That people who visit your blog does it for the ranking and not to meet new sites. To verify this, check in your site statistics for the pageview time of those sites and you will see that this time is not longer than 1 minute.
But however, all those program find the way to attract more users by paying them for referring people or visiting websites. That’s how they keep their users visiting over and over again the same websites. That’s like a vicious circle, once you enter you can’t leave it then!
My Personal Recommendation
When I managed the blogspot blog, I used like 1 month one of those programs. It provided me like 80 visits per day and I was wonder for that, when I began to use that program I simply love it, but then I start to check the statistics….When I saw the pageview time from that site, I leave it instantly!! really it doesn’t worth, by joining to those kind of programs you will be an slave for a time after you noticed that it doesn’t worth and you will end leaving it…
Hey! my name is Javier but you can call me Javo, everybody does.
Hey Mr Javo,
usually I’m mostly in agreement with you but today I have a slightly different viewpoint. I have used the traffic exchanges for years and have found them to be very useful if you approach them in the right way with the proper state of mind.
This first thing I cannot stress enough is 10-30 seconds. That is the time you have on the traffic exchange before they move to the next site.
Will they read your blog post – not a chance!
Will they read a splash page and drop their email address if you bribe them good? You bet they will.
Don’t try to use traffic exchanges to build your blog readership or sell products.
Do use traffic exchanges to build a newsletter or email list by giving away quality free information and you will be much happier with your results.
After you have those email addresses – then think about how to convert them to regular customers or blog subscribers.
Just my humble opinion….
Carol
TE’s aren’t good for very much except hogging server resources…
Btw you are no following…
Search Engine Panel’s last blog post..Long Tail Searches Are On The Rise
Hi Mr. Javo,
I think you’re right. I’ve tried the exchanges now for about 1 month. I’m having nothing but bad luck with them. As you said “a slave” – that’s what I feel like. I’ve spent hours on them trying to build up credits and the end results: I’ve wasted my time.
I’ve not gained any readers this way. Sure, my counter hits are way up! But as you said Mr Javo, they sick around for only the 10-30 seconds required and then off to the next.
Carol, you never mentioned money. Some clam to making up to $200 a day per exchange. I’ve surfed for hours without making one dollar. If anyone is making money with them I’d like to know the secret.
I think I see what your saying Carol on building an email list. But I don’t know about converting them to reader/subscribers. I’d be interested in learning more from you about this.
As for now, I agree with Mr. Javo. It’s slavery and not worth it.
Thanks Much Mr. Javo!!!
Terrah Dawn’s last blog post..Music for the Soul
You are welcome Terrah
I’m glad to be helpful. May be you can make money through this programs but you need to spend a lot of time on them, and I think that a blogger need to search the way to get traffic more easy than using thats programs.
You won’t get readers and quality traffic from there.
Mr. Javo, do you mind revealing how to check the activities of visitors directed from certain domains? I don’t think I can do that with sitemeter, what tracker did you use for that?
BobbyT’s last blog post..PostOnFire Mini Review
I use Google Analytics BobbyT, you can see everything you want with it. it’s awesome
I don’t think it’s worth it either. I tried Traffic G for a few weeks on one of my sites, and it didn’t provide any sustainable results. It also caused a trigger with Google to warn about inappropriate traffic generation.
Jeremy Neal’s last blog post..Is Using Google Alerts a Waste of Time for Bloggers?
You guys should start to track your advertising ressources!
I get an average of one signup at my membership site for every 400 views from clickexchanges. That’s not a great conversion but these programs are viral… means you signup new members and earn part of their traffic. Personally I don’t have to click anymore to get traffic, it’s all automated now.
I can tell you that almost all sources of traffic work… you just gotta find out how. For clickexchanges you need to create simple Squeeze Pages where people can enter their name and email address to be signed up for your opt-in list or free membership site.
It works!
I agree and disagree. If you know good programs, they can be worth it. I used to have a site that only had traffic from TX programs and people would actually read the site and stuff.
Also, considering I would get free credits just for logging on to the program daily, and that there were some clicks that would end up earning me 40 free credits, I actually got a rate of about 20:1.
Tx’s aren’t bad..You just have to pick the right ones and think it through.
Caren’s last blog post..New Comment System!
Guido, Carol, I will about it, may be all those program couldn’t be not than bad, thanks for sharing your opinion in my community.
I have different view on this, in fact I want to congratulate you for having 80 page views.. Looking on the positive side, any traffic is to be considered as traffic and should be happy about it. A one minute can be 15 or 30 if lucky enough to catch someone’s attention…
Positive is one step to succeed. Unless they are spamming your site…
I think this is a 2005 solution for a 2008 problem. It worked for a moment and then it just petered out from exhaustion. I might just have to join more Internet forums geared toward the content I blog about and then post an appropriate signature.
(That’s where the good bulk of my traffic comes from.)