Last Modified: August 22, 2008 | http://www.brokemansmoneyportal.com/webtraffic | Bookmark This Page! |

The hype surrounding most of these web traffic exchanges fizzled out ages ago, but they work. Trust me!

This website's obligation is to the users of web traffic programs, not the owners, therefore, the only currency we accept for payment in getting listed on our site is the owners of these programs building world-class web traffic exchanges! No payment in any other currency is accepted for more preferential ranking or removal from the banned list. Be sure to read about how these programs work and especially why popups totally suck, then please join any of these programs that you haven't already by clicking the appropriate graphic above. For more information click the title or the notes. Your favorite program missing? Check out our list of banned programs first, then please contact us. Convince me your program is great and I'll join under you.

Related Pages: Traffic Exchange List HitExchangeNews affiliate funnel's Unranked TE List Squidoo's 'Best Traffic Exchanges'

Section Table of Contents

• How These Programs Work
• Building Your TE Downlines
  • Getting Started With No Money
  • Getting Started With Some Funds to Invest
• Stay Far Away From Popups (And Anything Like It)!
• Why We Don't Use Banner Exchanges
• The Future of Web Traffic Exchanges
• Banned Programs

How These Programs Work

In a nutshell, web traffic exchanges (often shortened to TE's) are a way to promote your website. Basically, you look at other people's web pages and other people look at yours. The best way to see how TE's work is to actually get an account at one of them and start "surfing" and reading their FAQs. Don't worry, if are not a webmaster or don't already have a webpage, just join an affiliate program or payment processor to promote until you learn what TE's are all about. If you have PayPal you already have a webpage you can promote. Also, I strongly recommend, if you haven't already, a switch to Firefox as your primary web browser.

First, you must understand this or you won't anything else: traffic exchanges can be used to promote anything. I've seen everything from book stores, arts and craft stores and Ebay pages to political campaign (during elections) web sites, religious materials, and personal homepages. Though not everyone is always trying to sell you something, mostly what you will see are affiliate programs—where, for instance, person A gets rewarded by person B's purchase from person C.

It's important to take special care when filling out all the data these programs ask for regarding the sites you promote with them. Some, for example, give you the option of adding a short description to their records of your links. Carefully construct an adequate yet concise sentence or two that convey what your site is about and have it ready to cut and paste. Don't just rush quickly to fill up the 255 (or whatever) letters they give you like a junior high school homework assignment or abandon it altogether. My suggestion is to browse readily available magazines to study on how the pros write good ad copy. These descriptions are used with various bookmarking and search features, so your careful wordage could make a huge difference in the response you get for your efforts.

The same goes for putting painstaking care into providing other information asked for about your site. This info may be for some feature yet to be implemented. It is these higher level features that could make or break your marketing efforts.

Be sure, if you are serious about succeeding in this industry, to not just rely on a single source for information. Expose yourself to different opinions and perspectives. Features and interface details important to me, I have found, seem entirely irrelevant to others. In the spirit of cooperation so we can all make it, another fellow in the industry, Jon Olson, publishes an e-mailed weekly called HitExchangeNews you may find useful. As its intent is the same as this page's, I cannot help but recommend a free subscription. Please tell him that you heard about it from me. Another awesome resource worth bookmarking is Tim Linden's Blog.

Building Your TE Downlines

Many folks join TE's because they have a website or affiliate program they wish to promote. What I am about to present is merely a suggestion for what you could do to maybe make a lot of money; it is what I am doing. Remember there are no guarantees in this world except that someday you'll die, so don't come crying to me when this doesn't work for you. It takes work. Most people looking for money online don't want to have to do much for it—I'm afraid they have found the wrong website.

For now, I use traffic exchanges to promote traffic exchanges. I send the traffic from the two dozen or so programs I belong to, to the page you are looking at now, at the top of which has a listing of those same two dozen programs. It's reasonable to think that a traffic exchange member might be in the market to join another TE since they work in concert more effectively than solo. So pageviews from my TE accounts go to a page that advertises those TE accounts (which is the page you are reading right now), generating referrals, those referrals generate more pageviews which get sent to the TE page, generating more referrals. It becomes a chain reaction. Through this system, hopefully, you'll eventually have a legion of accounts at respectable traffic programs, each generating hits of their own accord and typically requiring less than five to ten minutes of weekly maintenance. Soon, campaigns that once took days or weeks clicking up pageviews now take a few short minutes changing target links in your accounts.

Your strategy for success in web traffic exchanges will no doubt be a combination of the following two extremes:

Getting Started With No Money

If you are like I was you're starting out with a whopping US$0.00 to spend on this. Go and download a multi-tab browser (like Firefox) so you can surf about seven to ten TE's at a time. Cycle through the tabs, clicking the right answer on the Turing Test, making sure to see if the site being promoted is of interest to you (because you want people to look at your site, right?). Several minutes (or more, if you can) of this every day for a few months, saving your pageview credits, will net a nice campaign. Send those pageview credits to your free website (they're all over the net, and so are free guides to web design) and count your referrals. Keep doing campaigns like this of varying length until it's perpetual.

Getting Started With Some Funds to Invest

The other far easier option: buy professional-grade web hosting, outsource comprehensive web design (and graphic design for banners, etc.), buy all the upgraded memberships, and buy enough pageview credits to last for a few months to a year in each of your TE's. Figure out how many hits each TE delivers each day, add 10% to 25%, multiply by the number of days the campaign should last, and haggle with the TE owner for a bulk discount. Don't even talk to them about a bulk discount until you're an upgraded member. Most pageview credits as advertised are way overpriced, most TE owners are ready to barter if you're ready to put money in their pocket. Banner impressions are of secondary consideration to you, they are better for the more nebulous art of 'branding,' and my experience has been, on a cost per referral basis, pageview credits are much cheaper. Also, banner ads tend to burn at a faster and more unpredictably oscillating rate than pageview credits. But do use the banner impressions that you will get. Keep doing campaigns like this of varying length until it's perpetual.

As I said earlier, the above scenarios illustrate the two extremes that most people's TE experiences will be somewhere in the middle of. You might do lots of work and/or spend (or reinvest) a bit of money, however, the massive traffic machine combined with lifetime commissions on direct downline purchases (among other goodies) will generate returns for the rest of your life. Whatever your unique recipe for building your perpetual traffic machine, if you do it right you'll be what they call a "heavy hitter." You'll be able to 'focus' these programs like laser beams at practically any website selling anything and rake in sales.

Stay Far Away From Popups (And Anything Like It)!

For the sake of securing success ethically and honestly, the sanity of your pages' users, and the continuing viability of the Internet as an effective advertising and communications medium, I implore you to forsake popups, popunders, and exit pages of any form whatsoever. Even and especially those annoying little dialog boxes that come up unsolicited, asking you to subscribe to some e-zine or add their URL to your favorites and those new-fangled, more insidious "fly in ads" that don't let you continue doing anything else with your computer until you dismiss them. Popups are an extreme annoyance to most and ethically questionable to many; I find these methods of promotion so offensive I make it a point to close those unwanted windows before they have a chance to pique my interest in something I want and I unwittingly end up supporting the popup industry.

Oh, but that's why they've got popup blockers! I hear you trying to argue in vain. The fact of the matter is, no popup blocker I have ever used quite reached perfection. Some freeze the computer for several seconds while blocking unwanted windows; others have been too stupid to tell the difference between a popup and a hyperlink that's supposed to open in a new window when I click on it. And while Firefox (or the Google Toolbar if you must continue using Internet Exploder) does a pretty good job, it's difficult to forsee an end to the 'arms race' between those who devise new methods of displaying popups and those who block them.

I am going somewhere with all this: One fundamental concept I believe you must absolutely know of in order to avoid programs and people who will likely fail at this and any other Internet endeavor: Mere hits (and the type of exposure offered by "services" such as popups, unsolicited commercial messaging) are an appalling waste of electricity, bandwidth, and time; hits from people with behaviors that will make your website successful are what really count. For example, as well as avoiding popup and exit traffic exchanges, stay away from so-called "auto hit" programs that do little to nothing to make sure people actually view your web page.

Turing Tests—mini-quizzes administered periodically to ensure that a human being, rather than a computer program, is present—are for obvious reasons vital to the effectiveness of a given traffic program. Auto hitters require no one to be present, the user could open their surfpage URL and go to bed, generating worthless hits to your site indefinitely; after all, if you don't end up having to see their ads, they probably don't end up having to see yours. However, even though a traffic exchange program may be following all the rules, it could still be ineffectively delivering traffic.

Those who exploit weaknesses in legitimate programs to avoid the actual viewing of pages or abuse their privileges with these programs in any way are truly theives in the worst sense. They ruin it for the hard-working business owners by devaluing their commodity, they ruin it for members by devaluing their work and resources, they ruin it for the public at large by postponing the day this niche industry potentially goes mainstream.

Why We Don't Use Banner Exchanges

I try to put a lot of work into all my endeavors, I sure don't like seeing my work ruined by others. I'd hate for some poisonous propaganda about the drug war from D.A.R.E. to show up on any of my web sites. Also, I don't want the effect I'm trying to create on a given web page destroyed by some jiggly Flash banner with colors that clash with my page. It does not strike me as a fiscally sound move to create a situation where customers don't want to click on one of the few methods you have for generating revenues, for fear of getting into an infinite popup loop or some other unreasonable annoyance. In an extreme example, you wouldn't want an adult-oriented ad showing up on a website designed for use by children.

Many web designers and small businesses on the Web fail to realize the importance of maintaining total contol over the appearance of their establishments, which means total control over every pixel of every page of your website, and control over whether your customer has to pass in front of an x-rated movie theater or a crack house or a beautiful, spacious park on the way into and out of your place.

The Future of Web Traffic Exchanges

Web traffic exchange owners have an obligation not only to their livelihood but to their members to increase not only the quantity but the quality of the pageviews their TE delivers, in addition, please take into account the following:

• Commoditize It! — The TE of the future allows members to buy and sell credits on a relatively open market. These traffic markets will be the feature that adds true excitement to traffic exchanges of the future if, in the following order of importance, they (1) make the sorting subroutines accurate and the display of prices and availability relevant, (2) make trading accessible to people of all economic stature, (3) commoditize it all; pageviews, banner impressions, banner clickthroughs, text links, etc.
• Verification of Consumer Product Knowledge — Please read the Future of GPTREM, the same applies here. TrueViewTraffic is the current leader in this area with their innovative surfbar which asks multiple-choice questions about the page being viewed that the user must answer before earning pageview credit and moving on to the next page.
• Member Base Filtration — Please read the Future of GPTREM, the same applies here
• Regionalize — One should be able to specify that their web page is only applicable to people in a certain burrough/neighborhood, city/town, county, state/province, nation, and/or globally, and, if they want, assign weight or preference to those categories. This would bring traffic exchange to the mainstream. People could see ads for the pizza place down the street. National companies test-marketing grocery store products in limited metropolitan areas could focalize web advertising thousands of times better than they now do television ads. To combine this pointer with the previous, a lutefisk company anywhere in the world could filter the member base against a list of Skandinavian last names, and then filter out again everyone not living in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle.
• Internationalization — Please read the Future of GPTREM, the same applies here
• Zero Tolerance for Popups — Get the scoop on why I hate popups above, though don't be overzealous, links that open in a new window aren't popups, also, some folks are very poor and have to sign up for free websites with popups out of their control, be strict but fair. Kill popups with the free Google Toolbar.
• Use Usernames — I am either 'dotcomboy' or Rodney, not #5632459703. Technology is advanced enough that there is no reason for websites that use accounts to refer to me by an assigned user ID number. Also, using e-mail addresses for logging in or in referral URLs is silly as they often change, leaving the user having to fix their URL everywhere on the Internet they put it. I don't join programs anymore that use ID numbers or e-mail addresses to refer to me. Insist on being able to choose a username in nearly every program you join, any number used to refer to you or your account should be entirely transparent to you.
• Banking Credits — Traffic exchanges work best in concert. Fifteen TE's promoting the same page will do better than the sum of fifteen TE's promoting fifteen different pages. Because of this, I cannot join or continue to be a member of TE's that don't allow me to save at least a portion of my credits indefinitely.
• Don't Mess With User Settings — never allow ads (with or without popups) that have the possibility of changing user settings, like window sizes, full screen mode, etc.

*WARNING* Banned Programs *WARNING*

Yes, our list of banned programs is much longer than that of our approved programs; just as there are probably more auto shops out there that you shouldn't take your car to—and just as there are probably more fast food restaurants you shouldn't eat at—than otherwise.

Any more web traffic programs that folks shouldn't join? Please let me know!

• Viral Visitors, Lemming Run, ViralClassAds, Money Legs, 3Step, ClickAholics, Viral Host, etc. — not comfortable with owner's 3-Step Money Cyber-Wheel Leader Scheme mentality, graphics slow my computer, uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL, my gut tells me they're scammers
• Jack Ten Forty Traffic Masters, ProHitsPlus — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL, unable to save up credits for later campaign
• Beach Party Hits, Emerald Clicks, Grey Wolverine Traffic, Traffic Troll — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• 123Clicks — popup advertising
• AutoHits.dk
• Carnival Clicks — buggy scripts
• clickevolution — auto hitter
• Clicks A Go Go — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• Click Harvester — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• ClixSwap — too shoddy and homegrown, unable to save up credits for later campaign
• Cyber Action Traffic — popup advertising
• DAN:BOOST — auto hitter
• ExplorerHits — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• e Traffic Freedom — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• Fast Easy Traffic — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• Fast Freeway — popup advertising
• HitHurricane — advocates of 'site stealing'
• Lords of Traffic — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• Link Crews — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• Race Hits — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• SafariCash — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• Soaring 4 Traffic — buggy scripts
• The Traffic Patch — auto hitter
• TopSurfer — unable to save up credits for later campaign
• Traffic Flare — popup advertising
• Traffic Taxis — uses assigned user ID numbers and/or e-mail address for login and/or referral URL
• Traffic Wonderland — buggy scripts
• UniqueTES — too confusing

—Rodney J. Lewis; Saturday, June 28, 2008