Web traffic exchanges and surf for traffic sites can be very effective and helpful when you are just getting started with Internet marketing. That said, there are some that are entirely worthless and just drain your time and energy so choose wisely.

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but I have found that you can often tell how valuable a website will be for you by how it looks. In other words, was it just slapped together haphazardly or did some time and effort go into it?

How Surfing For Traffic Works
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Surf for traffic sites are usually unstructured, meaning you will see all of the sites in the rotation, regardless of niche. So you will see a mix of business opportunity sites, sites promoting advertising and traffic generation, as well as some personal blogs and affiliate sites.

So you wind up surfing sites that have nothing to do with your niche. This doesn’t mean they are automatically of no interest, but if you can find a traffic site that allows you to categorize your sites, you will be getting targted traffic instead of random hits and this is always better.

I have personally not participated in a lot of the surf for traffic sites until recently. I came across a new one that caught my eye, called ThumbVu, which I joined for two reasons. First, it’s new and there was a lot of interest generated before the launch, meaning lots of eyeballs would see my sites right away.

Second, unlike typical surf for traffic sites, it shows you three sites to choose from across the upper left corner once the timer ends. I like that I can select from those three, or hit “More” and get three different ones. So it’s not just serving up one site at a time which can get tedious very quickly.

There is also an incestuous aspect to the traffic exchanges, since everyone using them is hoping to sell their product or service to each other. In fact because of this, that is one good way to find these types of sites – find one, and then check out the others that it is associated with. You will usually see banners and links in the Members area.

Some sites, like Traffik Magik, will bundle a bunch of the traffic exchanges together and offer an income opportunity. You join 10 or so different exchanges which are all incorporated into one site that you then promote, instead of each one individually. This can give you many more chances to make money from your efforts.  You may still choose to promote some of the individual sites, too, since not everyone will be interested in setting up the bundled site.

How Long Has Surfing for Traffic Been Going On?
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These things have been around for a long time, and that is because if you put in the effort, they work. There are variables of course, such as the site that you are promoting. If it’s not appealing visually with a compelling offer, you can surf till the cows come home and see little or no benefit from the traffic you receive.

Another drawback is that it can be easy to get side-tracked “surfing the dream” when you should be working. You may also find yourself buying products that you might not really need, because of a compelling offer you surf across (guilty!).

But I can say that, even as a late arrival on the surf for traffic scene, I have found some very useful products and services while using traffic exchanges and surfing for credits. that I might otherwise never come across. I have also driven significant traffic to my websites and generated sign-ups for my newsletters. And let’s face it. Free traffic generation is very useful when your dream is bigger than your wallet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Traffic Exchanges + Surf Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.