Traffic Exchange Tips

If you’ve been online a while, you probably have more than one opportunity or product to promote. Trying to juggle your multiple streams of income into the proper advertising channels is challenging. But the question isn’t where to advertise, if you’ve found the value in using traffic exchanges, it’s how many sites should you add to the rotation?

You probably belong to several different exchanges, and the number of sites you can list at each exchange varies. For instance, you can add all the sites you want to StartXchange, Hit Safari, TrafficRoundup, and Mystical Maze. While at 1-2-3 Clicks, TsunamiGOLD, and WebBizInsider you can only add one. But is that necessarily a bad thing?

Actually, you shouldn’t add too many sites, or your sites aren’t getting proper exposure. Consider this:

You add 20 sites at StartXchange, but you’re a free member and only earn .333 credits per click. To get 100 views, you have to surf 333 times. OK, so maybe you’re a marathon surfer, but what if you only surf 50 times each time you surf? That means you’re getting 16 credits for about 20 minutes work.

That won’t even allow all the sites you have listed one credit each!

If you want to list that many sites, you’ll need to pay the $5 a month to go pro, which trebles your surfing power. You surf 50 times and get 50 hits. Of course, you still won’t have much exposure for 20 sites. If you’re only getting two hits for each site, each time you surf, how many sales or sign-ups do you expect to gain? Unless you surf StartXchange every day and step up the time surfing, you probably won’t be very productive.

Yet, cut that number down to one or two sites. With one site listed, as a pro member, you’ll get 50 views each time you surf 50 sites. With two sites listed, 25 views for each 50 sites surfed. Big difference, right? OK. It’s true that you don’t necessarily have to put your sites on auto-assign, but still, why carry so many? It’s simple to change sites when you figure the pond is all fished out for the one you have listed. It’s easier to track sales or sign-ups from one exchange this way, too, and we all know the importance of tracking.

I just used StartXchange as one example, but you should consider how many sites you list at all of the exchanges you surf. If your credits are always auto-assigned, as they are at Raging Bull Traffic or Funny Farm Traffic, though your sites can be weighted, still consider how much you use the exchange, how many credits per click you’re getting, and how often you surf before adding sites to the list just because you can. Your sites won’t be seen as often as needed to make your surfing worthwhile if you add too many. You can’t be too rich, too thin, or too stingy when adding sites to traffic exchanges. Try adding fewer sites and see if this plan doesn’t work better for you.

Pat Marcello
Opportunity Village Marketing
OVBlogger.com

1. StartXchange
2. TS25
3. I Love Hits
4. Traffic Pods
5. Traffic Roundup
6. Mystical Maze
7. WebmasterQuest
8. Hit Safari
9. ProHitsPlus
10. TopSurfer

Top 10 Generated from statistics tracked by Traffic Exchange List. Use our free tracking rotator and help us get better statistics!

Credits: To Buy or Not to Buy… That Is the Question

OK, so you’ve been surfing this traffic exchange and you really like it a lot. It’s fun, there isn’t a lot of hassle with pop-ups, annoying PTPs, or adult sites shocking you out of your chair, but you notice that you aren’t getting many credits for long hours of surfing. Should you forget the site and move on?

Not necessarily.

You may want to buy credits. But how do you know if the credits you pay for are really a good buy?

To determine the value of each credit, divide the price by the number of credits you’ll be getting. Check out this chart, which compares traffic exchanges on sales of 5,000 credits

 

 

 

 

It seems like a no-brainer about where to spend your money, right? TS25 seems to be the clear choice for a couple of reasons. First, they have an extremely active member base. Second, let’s assume your results in that traffic exchange are usually good.

But is $8.99 for 5,000 credits a great deal, or merely a good one? Consider this: each hit to your site costs 5 of those credits. So, what are you actually getting? 1,000 hits. Hmm… let’s recalculate. The price per credit just went up to $0.00899. But that’s still not bad, just not as good as it seemed on the surface.

Let’s look at the other exchanges. Clicks Matrix and Hit Safari are giving you a full 5,000 hits for the price. Trafficswarm’s credits go for displays of your text ad, not actual clicks. You need to be a good short ad writer to entice folks to visit your site. For some, this isn’t a problem, but writing text ads are your weak spot, you may want to think about spending so much on credits at Trafficswarm.

Hit Safari and Trafficswarm are definitely the more expensive of the three sites, but think about the audience in each of those programs and how they operate, too. Hit Safari is consistently in the top exchanges on anyone’s list and just by the virtue of its format, Trafficswarm’s hits are better targeted than force-fed advertising on other exchanges. So, is it worth it to pay a little more? Perhaps. Only you can decide where you get the best results.

When you’ve made the choice about where to spend your money, also consider how long it would take you to accumulate 5,000 credits. If you get a 1:1 ratio, it would take you 5,000 times an average 15 seconds (some timers are longer, some shorter) or 1,250 minutes, which translates to 20 hours. Can that 20 hours be better spent?

If you don’t have time to surf, or if you would rather concentrate on other aspects of marketing aside from surfing, buying credits could be your best option. Evaluate your intended purchases, then spend your money wisely.

Pat Marcello
Opportunity Village Marketing
http://ovweb.net
http://Ovblogger.net

 

1. StartXchange
2. Mystical Maze
3. TS25
4. Hit Safari
5. I Love Hits
6. Traffic Roundup
7. WebmasterQuest
8. Traffic Pods
9. Surf4TheEarth
10. Traffic Meet

Top 10 Generated from statistics tracked by Traffic Exchange List. Use our free tracking rotator and help us get better statistics!