Friday 31 July 2009

If not traffic exchanges - what else?

I have received a lot of criticism of my comments of traffic exchanges recently. I do not mean to give the impression that I am an enemy of traffic exchanges, as this is not the case. I believe they have their place in the correct context as you can deduce from my previous posts. The real dilemma is a different one in 2009. It is reduced to the following question - how can I get (targeted) traffic to my website. That, ultimately, is the bottom line.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to get exposure for any website/blog on the Internet. Do not forget there are over 100 million of us. I am one in 100 million and those are about my starting chances for getting traffic to my site if I am fair - Now that is what I call a pretty formidable challenge - somewhere near to winning the lottery?
So back we go to how can I get (targeted) traffic to my website. In the context of traffic exchanges yes this will give you some traffic which, I agree, is better than no traffic. as discuessed in previous posts, no one can persuade me that it is targeted traffic - how can it be?
The main problem I see is that TE's can only get you noticed if you use splash pages for list building - to do this professional you are going to take a lot of time and effort to collect those emeil addresses.
An excellent success story for this strategy is Tim Linden the owner of Startxchange. Tim's uses his traffic exchange to attract subscribers whom he then emails on a regular basis with all sorts of tips and tricks related to traffic exchanges.

Thursday 30 July 2009

traffic exchange - blog exchange - the differences


In recent posts we had a look at the difference between traffic exchanges and blog exchanges. I want to add an interesting experience I just had. My blog has just been refused on a blog exchange. Why?
The answer I received when I was declined was that my blog on search engine optimizaton was not really interesting enough. Now there is a nice objective decision for you! This has never happened to me on a traffic exchange. We all know the various reasons we can been banned from traffic exchanges but not that it is not interesting enough.
Yet on the other hand while I find such a policy discriminatory, it does show that blog exchanges seem to put a greater emphasis on the quality of content - this cannot be said of traffic exchanges who have fairly low criteria for approval of the site and in many cases is even automated.

Monday 20 July 2009

Google and linkreferral - answers welcome

A few posts ago we had a lot of discussion on G00GLE's position on the use of traffic exchanges if your website contains Adense adverts from g00gle. The conclusion we came to was that they are very foggy on this topic in their guidelines and basicaly they do not like it but do not say you will be banned for using traffic exchanges.

linkreferral to get traffic to your website. Again I can find no information in the Adsense guidelines so I was wondering if you have any experience oor comments on this. Next question for me - does g00gle allow you to use linkreferral. Basically linkreferral is a free site. You sign up with the url of your website and you categorise your site according to topic. This puts you on a ranked list. Then if you visit 30 sites, review 5 sites and make acomment or a question in the forum within a 24 hour period you move up the list. By doing so you move up the list quite quickly if you do this on a daily basis. And the higher up the list the greater the chances you have of receiving traffic. They claim you can receive up to 60 visits per day through this system. But my question is will this ban me from Adsense?

Friday 17 July 2009

Traffic exchanges - what are you looking for?

Just good a relevant comment from Elizabeth Barrete about why she uses TE's. Elizabeth states:

"What I seek from a traffic exchange is not direct cash but rather ... traffic. Exposure. New people. After a while, I find that some folks who surf by will stick around and become regular readers.

Also, I surf by multitasking. It doesn't eat up nearly as much time to open the traffic surfing page, leave it up, and just click occasionally between other activities. Sometimes I find cool stuff that way.:




Valid comment I believe but I just think that the numbers who actually stick around are comparively small - I am only speaking of my own experience. I think we all know how tremendously difficult it is now to get good traffic to a website. There is no magic recipe. Buying traffic is really a scam - one click and off they go. Getting good search engine racnkings is the real answer but the work that involves can be quite offputting. I have written a lot on how one can help search engines to find your site. Any ideas on other means of getting traffic???

Sunday 12 July 2009

Link exchanges - the life blood of websites

By the way, if anyone has a blog related in any way to this one and is interested in exchanging links, please leave your details in the comments box below and I will be right back to you.

Thanks Carrie for the comment about blogs


I find it really great when I get comments on my blog postings. Here is one from Carrie who writes:

if you use traffic exchange sites to find new blogs, leave comments on those blogs, yes, you might find new readers. you have to network.
search engine optimization? how does one do that? can you give some info?

And I could not agree more with you, Carrie, if you find blogs that interest you then do take the trouble and leave comments - as in my case you can see they are appreciated. Concerning your question on search engine optimization, I have a separate blog which explains the basics on getting higher rankings on search engines.
Final point, if you are interested there are special traffic exchanges which only accept blogs. Here is an example.

Saturday 11 July 2009

Traffic exchanges and Adsense - making money?


Elizabeth just commented on an earlier post I had on using Adsense and traffic exchanges. She writes:
I agree about traffic exchange, it's not only that with the viruses (I use linux so they don't work), but if you want to earn money with google adsense using traffic exchange isn't going to work. I had 10,000+ visitors to my site but I only earned 0.02.
Thank you for your comment Elizabeth and what I take from it is that Traffic Exchange traffic is simply not a trageted audience so they will not be interested either in your site content or your ads. Making 0.02 cents on 10 000 plus visitors is hardly what anyone could call a good conversion rate.
Motto for me is that to get good Adsense conversions you have to work really hard to get your site noticed on the big search engines - and that we all know is easlier said than done.

Thursday 9 July 2009

Throwing a sprat to catch a whale - traffic exchangers tactics


I take it we all know what an opt-in Splash page is. Basically it is an attractive web page on a traffic exchange which, usually through offering you something for free, will ask for your name and email address. and that, I believe, ladies and gentlemen, is where Traffic Exchanges play a very useful role. Not by trying to sell something directly to the surfer but by collecting his/her email address to contact at a later date for the sales pitch. This is known as list building. There is a common saying among Internet marketers that a potential customer has to see an offer a total of seven times before deciding to purchase.
Anyone who has experience of traffic exchanges are very familiar with these tactics - their inboxes speak for themselves.

Wednesday 8 July 2009

Some more info on the discussion on traffic exchanges and using g00gle Adsense

A number of posts ago I raised the topic if google Adsense will ban you for using traffic exchanges to promote their website. This is what I found on their adsense blog.

We occasionally receive questions from publishers interested in using traffic exchanges to bring traffic to their site. While these services may help advertise your site, we don't recommend using them, as they may also result in similar invalid activity. We realize that you may have questions about a specific traffic service and whether it could potentially create invalid impressions or clicks. However, please understand that we're unable to comment on any particular third-party service.


Well, I sure love clarity and these statements are about as helpful as this road sign. The answer is basically a non-answer and when I think about it invalid. Using a traffic exchanges in no way induces people to click on Adsense ads. Or am I wrong? Secondly their following sentence basically says do not ask about individual cases as we won't answer. Thanks for that G00GLE.

Basically, the message I take is - if we (g00gle - that is - feel you get too many clickthrus using a TE you're banned? Comments are more than welcome.

Tuesday 7 July 2009

So why DID I join blogexplosion?


There would seem to be a general feeling that I am coming across very negative on the use of traffic exchanges - traffic exchanges are for people who use traffic exchanges to promote traffic exchanges.

Sites which show blogs have very different content and I believe a very different user. Many admit they are there to get a little traffic to their blog but not to promote or sell anything - which is not the case for traffic exchanges where profit is the object in one form or another.

For bloggers who are starting out with a new blog, it is simply an additional means of giving it a kick start until organic traffic builds up.

Monday 6 July 2009

A super thank you to Jerry and Fuzzy Grey for their help

Concerning the issue in an earlier post about the legality of using Traffic Exchanges when your website contains Adsense, we seem to be getting clarification.
Fuzzy Grey comments:
"No monetary gain is generated with legitimate traffic exchanges that require the user to intentionally display a given web page. Unlike the auto-surfers that run a java app to display pages without end user intervention.

I suppose the big G would be the only one to provide the definitive answer to this. An email requesting clarification from them will be forthcoming shortly, I'll post any response here as well."


Now that is what I call helpful. Refreshing to learn that there are people on the Internet willing to work and share their knowledge with others. The same goes for Jerry whose comments you can also read under the relevant post. Much appreciated, Jerry.

Sunday 5 July 2009

A comment left on the blog - and a good one!

What about links on forums, it shouldn't be bad idea to get traffic from any web. Not sure if all things you say are true.
Firstly, let us be absolutely clear what we are talking about - a forum is a group of people sharing information, opinions, pictures, whatever on a website which is password protected. Traffic exchanges - well you would not be reading this if you did not know what they were.

Participation in forums is a legitimate way of getting an inbound link and traffic to your website. But be careful and do not make the mistake that many are silly enough to post their web address with their comments on any forum - by that I mean forums that are not relevant to their particular subject. Even on this blog a lot of comments are simply links to websites that have nothing to do with this topic. I leave them because these people are just wasting their time. Google, for example, checks for relevance and I believe actually punishes such spammers.

So, Yes, post to forums - but only to forums that are relevant to the topic of your website.

Saturday 4 July 2009

Traffic exchanges and Adsense - I need an answer

Can anyone tell me definitively if using traffic exchanges with a site that has Adsense leads to one being banned by Adsense. I have looked carefully at the advice given by google Adsense and there is no explicit mention of the use of traffic exchanges as being prohibited. What are your experiences?

Thursday 2 July 2009

Maybe I am just plain stupid but ....

Very often when I see traffic exchanges advertise they frequently state this is an excellent means of getting trageted traffic to your website. I understand that it is a means of getting traffic to my website but can someone explain to me how and in what way this traffic is trageted? The visitors are surfers of traffic exchanges so I woudl call them a target group if I was trying to get visitors to a new traffic exchange. However, if I want traffic to my blog on holidays in Ireland or moving to Greece is this my target group?