Traffic Exchanges – Another Failure

In my recent post concerning social bookmarking sites, I shared my negative experiences with the use of sites such as:

  • Stumble Upon
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Reddit

Although I did see a quick spike in traffic, it was not what I was looking for. So I simultaneously began using traffic exchanges as another way to drive traffic to my blogs and sites. I set-up my free accounts, created various splash pages and started surfing to earn points!  For those of you that haven’t tried traffic exchanges here is a quick overview as they are all similar:

  • You create a free account (or you can pay for a “premier” or similar higher level account)
  • Enter your website(s)
  • Create splash pages for those websites
  • Surf other members splash pages and/or sites in a surf bar to earn points (you typically have to spend a certain amount of time on each splash page or site, usually 10-15 seconds, to earn points)
  • Once you accumulate a certain number of points you can apply them to time periods in which your splash page or website is displayed to other members/surfers
  • If the person (or you, if you are surfing) views a site that is interesting,  you can click the link to go to the full site
  • If you join a team, you can all surf together to maximize the points or rewards

The idea behind traffic exchanges is to create a splash page to gets the surfers attention, enticing them to click through to their sites. They hope to sell you something or get you to join them in their group of surfers. You are basically surfing to be surfed and I spent hours upon hours of surfing to earn those points on sites that I had no interest in!

ALL IN VAIN! I spent countless hours on this only to figure out that EVERYONE was doing the same thing as I was. The large majority of surfers are only surfing to earn points and in some traffic exchanges, you can purchase points. There is no real interest in what people are promoting because everyone is worried about their own promotion. My visitor count was certainly high but the page views were low and the clicks on my site(s) were non-existent.

Another failure and I guess that is the best way to learn because I can now pass on my experience that using traffic exchanges do not work. Please do not waste your time. If anyone has had a different experience please let me know. I tried for six weeks and no REAL success.