Get Paid Lots

It has been a long time since I’ve seen free traffic exchanges being advertised with incredible frequency. However, they are still around, especially within the Get Paid Program world of earning online. A quick Google search brings up more than 15 million results, so you would think that the owners of these websites must be making some money off them.

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Owners making money = people using the sites. But when you examine what free traffic exchanges actually do, you may find it hard to understand why people use them.

The goal of any website or blog owner is NOT to get as much traffic as possible to his or her website or blog. More traffic does not equal more profit. The key word that is missing is “targeted.” Targeted traffic is the only thing you should concern yourself with, unless you are lucky enough to find one of the few PPC affiliate programs that don’t mind free traffic exchanges.

Free traffic exchanges show websites in a rotation and each user must click on a little button to go to the next site. For that view and click, the user earns one (or half) view to his or her own site. It sounds like a very easy, though boring, way to get traffic.

The problem is, the traffic is not targeted at all and, in my experience, often not even english-speaking. The person who is viewing your site is concerned only with gettiing traffic to his own site, not finding detailed information about whatever your niche topic is. People find that sort of thing through the search engines.

One argument I’ve seen that supports free traffic exchange use is that the massive number of hits to the site can increase directory or Alexa rankings in some way. It would not increase search engine rankings, and those are the ones you should really be concerned with. I suppose, if your intention was to sell the website, boosting hit counts may seem attractive as well. However, any savvy buyer would know what to look for to see the true worth of the website or blog.

Free traffic exchanges still flourish in the internet marketing world. I’m not really sure why. Anyone wishing to expand his or her online business and increase profits should steer clear of them. They are, essentially, a waste of time.