Are Traffic Exchanges Really Worthwhile?
There appears to be zillions of traffic exchanges on the internet all espousing the amount of traffic they can deliver to your website. Most internet entrepreneurs seem to be members of at least 5 and up. But considering the amount of time spent clicking away, are the returns commensurate with the time spent?I, for example have spent many hours collecting credits so that my websites will be shown to the “eager” receptors out there.Considering the amount of time I have spent I have not realized one signup from this activity that I am aware of.In contrast being a member of one unique  ’get paid to read’ e-mail site I amassed $20  that I used to send a paid ad to it’s over 100,000 members and got three paid signups. Now I had to click and answer a question. If I got it right I earned 12 cents, lessor amounts if I got it wrong, but on the average I guess I had to click between 200 and 250 e-mails to get to my $20.Now considering I would have spent on the average 2 hours a day clicking on traffic exchanges and virtually received nothing, I wondered where all my views were going.
An analysis of a couple of exchanges soon showed me what I believe the reason was for this.
I had to be a heavy hitter.
Why? Because it was only the heavy hitters that got their ads shown to everyone. If you are not a heavy hitter, who is going to see most of your views? The heavy hitters of course.
Now; are the heavy hitters interested in your ads? No, in the main they are only interested in having theirs seen.
Look at it this way. If you have four heavy hitters earning say, 10,000 credits each and then you have 10 clickers earning 1000 credits each this means that there is a ratio of 4 to 1. If you are lucky your site may be viewed once each by the 10 and 4 times for each of the hitters.
What does this mean? It means that the 1000 credits you have earned is devalued by a factor of 4. They are really only worth 250 credits. It’s worse than that, especially if you are a free member of a traffic exchange as most of your clicks are generally earning you only half a credit and for some TE’s less.
I have seen on some TE’s where heavy hitters seem to manage so many credits you wonder where they have come from. On calculation they would have to be clicking almost 24 hours a day to amass the number they get.
Where does this leave you and me, the average Joe Blow clicking away for half an hour a day? What chance does your ad have being seen by others just like you and me? Not much I think.
Most of us are working a day job and we want to spend time with our family not be clicking away on unfruitful traffic exchanges.
Maybe we should be focusing on other activities for promoting our sites, spending this time advertising on forums, class ad sites, and spending a lot more time on SEO. Surely this will be more productive of our time!
I, for one am not going to spend my time clicking for hours on end, hoping to become one of those heavy hitters.
I guess not being a heavy hitter could be another way of being called a bottom feeder.
Wilf Gerrard-Staton is a Work-From-Home person. He now runs several blogs on different subjects. Entry to one series is at:Â Â http://www.how-do-you-do.info
