Traffic Exchanges

Building traffic to a blog is a huge endeavor, no matter what anyone says, particularly good, worthwhile traffic. It's easy to fall into the traffic exchange programs that are out there because they do promise you traffic and for the most part, they deliver.

However, it's what they deliver that matters. For all intents and purposes, traffic exchanges work like this....you post your blog to the exchange, and then you surf through other blogs in the same exchange. Typically they serve the blogs up to you and you have to click a button to move on to the next. In order for your visit to count, you have to stay on the blog you are visiting for a minimum amount of time, usually 10 or 15 seconds. Each blog you visit earns you points which in turn are used to show your blog to others.

However, the trouble is, most of the people who visit your blog are other bloggers just like you, who are just going through the motions like you, clicking their way to more points for their own blog. The chances of them actually stopping and reading your blog are quite slim. The chances of you making any advertising revenue from your Adsense ads is even slimmer. Unless you have a stellar blog, one that people just cannot go past, they are unlikely to stop beyond the 15 second requirement.

The other problem with traffic exchanges is that you run the risk of getting in trouble with Google Adsense who don't care much for these kinds of programs. Some people seem to have no problem, but I have known other bloggers who got in trouble with Adsense from using traffic exchanges.

If you are serious about making money from your blog, you need to work on organic traffic, traffic that comes from search engines and links from other blogs in the same theme as your own. Building this kind of blog traffic takes time, but pays off in the long run. It's far more profitable to have 10 visitors who are looking for information about the subject you are writing about, than 100 visitors who are just surfing through. There is a chance the 10 visitors will be interested in what your Adsense advertisers have to offer.

My suggestion is leave traffic exchanges to the amateurs, and do without them. Build your content, comment on other blogs, keep improving your writing, optimizing your keywords and your ads, and you will be better off in the long run. Unless all you want is to be able to say your blog got 1000 hits yesterday, traffic exchanges aren't much good.

Technorati Tags
adsense
blog income
make money
money making secrets