Traffic exchanges are one of the most misunderstood traffic sources out there. A lot of people will tell you that they don’t work and that they provide worthless untargeted traffic. Nothing could be further from the truth, but as with other methods you have to make them work for you, by using them the right way. First off all we know exactly why people are using traffic exchanges. They want to make money online, they want free traffic, and they are likely using that traffic to promote a “make money program” of some sort. As you can see the traffic is very targeted if we provide what people want e.g. “how to make money online”, “how to get tons of free traffic”, “how to recruit more people to their biz opp” or any combination of these 3.
Traffic Exchanges Explained
On the other hand you will be wasting you time marketing other niche products on traffic exchanges, people might be interested in e.g. football, but they are not surfing traffic exchanges to learn about football. If you want to promote niche products on exchanges you need to spin in from the “make money” angle. And since we know people are busy surfing to generate traffic to their own pages, we can’t expect them to read a long sales letter. You only have a few seconds to catch their attention before they click on to next site so you need to get their attention fast – then you want to get their contact info so you can follow up and make the sale. It’s extremely difficult to sell directly on a traffic exchange, because people are not searching for products they are advertising their own business…
So always use traffic exchanges to build a list and then go for the sale on the back end. The squeeze page and monetization plan outlined in chapter 1 is perfect for traffic exchange use. With a good traffic exchange optimized hook and squeeze page, you are ready to venture into the land. But before you go I must warn you that there are thousands of exchanges out there, but very few of them are actually worth using. I highly recommend that you focus your efforts on 5-10 of the big ones – basically you want to have your site shown 24-7 in the exchanges and if you are just starting out you can’t do that with 30 (you will just dilute your efforts).
Getting The Traffic
Furthermore, the people surfing the smaller exchanges are likely also in the big ones, you might as well grab them there… As your advertising budget expands, you can start testing more exchanges and adding the good ones to your list. Here are a few of the best traffic exchanges:
- 1. Dragon Surf
- 2. Traffic-Splash
- 3. I Love Hits
- 4. Advertising Know How
- 5. StartXchange
- 6. Traffic Bunnies
These 6 exchanges are a good starting point, and you can then expand with the exchanges that make it into the top 10-15 over at Affiliate Funnel. At first you are probably aiming for 1 new subscriber per 200 views on the exchanges, but over time you will be looking to bring that down to 1 per 100 (or better) – That may not sound like much, but when you factor in the low cost of traffic exchange credits, this is actually very cost-effective. If you have implemented the monetization steps from article one and have a good follow up series in place, you will very likely turn a profit, 23/41 when you buy credit packages from the 6 exchanges above.
Of course you can also surf a bit to get some extra free advertising, but I don’t recommend surfing too much. Time is money and the time you spend surfing is better spent tweaking your squeeze page and follow up series – and on using the extra traffic methods explained previously.