Part One in a series
Many people are members of Traffic Exchanges and think that they are the be all end all of website promotion. For certain niches that is correct.
Niches worth targeting in Traffic Exchanges:
- Traffic Exchanges – If you are opening a new traffic exchange and want to get the word out there is no better place to promote it than on other traffic exchanges. Using a referral url in a traffic to build a downline in traffic exchanges is a waste of time.
- Make Money Products – Many people use traffic exchanges to drive traffic to a make money opportunity or member program. Unless you own the program this is akin to promoting traffic exchange referral urls in a traffic exchange.
- Marketing tools – If you use marketing tools to promote your online business and you wish to promote them to others for referral commissions a traffic exchange may be a good place to market these products if you can do it in a unique fashion.
- Your own products or services – This is the reason that the average traffic exchange user should be there to drive people to their own list. Lead with your first then promote your products and services, unless you have a totally unique product then lead with the product first.
- List Building – The most Important Use of a Traffic Exchange.
Most people that use traffic exchanges do so because they have joined some member program that has a downline builder and are told to drive traffic to their referral url for the program and back end traffic exchange referrals. This is an admirable way to utilize traffic exchanges to build the list of the program owner, with your return on time negligible and the most benefit going to the program owner.
Yep I said it. Using traffic exchanges to build referrals in a member program such as 10Khits, Mpam, Yorgoo, Traffic Hoopla or any other downline builder is an abuse of your efforts in using a traffic exchange. By using traffic exchanges for this purpose you are wasting your time and efforts. All you are doing is building the list of the program owner with them relieving the most benefit. They are using your labors to build their list.
I have heard and preached the argument for downline integrity. I know one person who preaches this endlessly and is even vocal about it in various forums and takes a soap box mentality about it. To me when I hear this diatribe I chuckle because I have personal first hand knowledge of him violating this trust he holds so dear. I now personally don’t care about downlines in any program nor will join any program where that is the key component.
Does this mean I don’t use traffic exchange? I currently don’t have any active campaigns on traffic exchanges at this time, but I am working on a traffic exchange marketing blitz in the near future. Will I click to advertise this blitz? Absolutely not. I will either buy traffic or offer a co-op to traffic exchange owners, but clicking traffic exchanges is a poor use use of ones time if you want to be a successful online marketer.
You need to look at it like this. If you spend 2 hours a day 5 days a week clicking traffic exchange you have used 10 hours of your time that can be better used to make money. Multiply that time by 52 weeks a year and you have used 520 hours of your time clicking looking at advertising. If you put a value on your time and using minimum wage in the USA your weekly traffic exchange task at two hours a day is costing you 10 x $5.85 = $58.50 a week multiply that times 52 weeks for $3042 a year!
I can buy a lot of advertising using these rates for $250 a month you can get the word out a lot faster about your product or service than by clicking for credits. Plus you should value your time at more than minimum wage I rate my time at $40 an hour and at this rate I look at ROI on my activities. If I spend $40 I need to make a return of $160 for my efforts for it to be justified.
So using the example above of $58.50 as a weekly value of your time at two hours a day clicking traffic exchanges if you are not making at least $117 dollars a week for your efforts you are wasting your time! See you have already spent $58.50 in your lost time that is gone. Even if you make $58.50 for your efforts all you have done is broke even you really have not made any money. You can get a job at McDonald’s that will pay you better than that. If you are not doubling your investment for your time or are valuing your time at $5.85 an hour you probably are not serious about making money online.
Part Two Subscribe to My RSS Feed to Monitor this Series.