The oddest thing happened early Sunday morning. I was over hanging out at Twitter – someone was reaching out to see if his followers were real or not so I took the bait and started a conversation. It was short, and has totally nothing to do with this post, except for the fact that I saw another tweet that caught my attention. It was someone’s announcement of their new “traffic exchange.”

In case you’re not familiar with the term, or have not been online that long (a decade?) these are services where you can Get Traffic For Your Website. Almost all traffic exchanges are free to join, with many of them having the ability to upgrade either as you sign up or later.

The fact that I’ve run across both, the Tweet (a bust) and this program mentioned above (potential?) in the same day means the fates want me to write about them.

Yes, way back when, these traffic churners used to be called start pages (or startpages whichever you prefer). The beauty of them was (and still can be) that if you have trouble just getting someone, anyone, to lay eyes on your site, they are so very simple to set up and do just that… put your page in front of someone’s eyes… for free.

The usual arrangement with these types of programs is a “I’ll look at yours if you’ll look at mine.” The potential for sales, with the right page is possible, but I look at them more as “branding” than anything else.

That’s not to say that I haven’t made sales from these services, I have, but generally it’s the phone call or email where someone tells me, “I saw your site surfing and bookmarked you about three months ago and decided to check you out.” (Hey now or later, you can’t beat a client!)

I’ve even had my primary business remembered three years later, just because of the branding capabilities of these little free gems.

The one I’m typing about right now is called TrafficTurn.com and it appears brand new – and new can be very good. Sometimes it pays to get in on the ground floor so to speak.

They offer auto and manual traffic exchange options. Manual, of course means you determine the rate and speed at which the other person’s website loads and you go on to the next. Auto surfing basically runs itself, and can rack you up a ton of points if you remember to log in and “surf.” Conversely, auto surfing also means you can do other things as these websites go by.

So I have a mixed reaction to auto surfing. Great if you’re too busy; bad if everyone in the program is doing the same thing.

But traffic exchanges do serve a purpose (and some people I’ve talked to swear by them). Let’s face it, every website needs traffic – and this type (being free) is a million times better than the “guaranteed traffic” being hawked online (long story but I know of what I speak).

With a traffic exchange you have a captured audience that can be your ticket to multiple signups if what you offer is either 1) free or 2) so unusual they’ve got to open your site and see what you’re all about (thus giving you an actual trackable visitor).

TrafficTurn is free to join, and once you receive your welcome email all you need to do it log in and get your website linked up into their system. Then you start surfing (again choosing manually or automatically).

They also have slight twists to their particular program. You can earn:

o More credits
o Make money
o Sell your credits
o Buy advertising space
o and more.

They don’t even push you to upgrade, but do encourage you to fully explore your potential to upgrade. You just may find that upgrading is the ticket for you.

Other things I should mention include:

o Just a 10 second timer for manual surfing (excellent); and
o 15 second timer if you put it on autopilot.

They will start you off with 200 credits free just for signing up (again a nice perk). And, of course, every time you visit other members sites you are earning more credits so you can have your webpage shown more often.

They even have online games you can play and earn more credits… or cash. I also should mention it’s just one account per member, and that they have many other benefits I have not listed here.

Again, in terms of marketing this is one of those free things to add to your toolkit. Many, many people are on a really strict budget, especially in these down times. Taking advantage of every conceivable way to get free traffic is a must.

Just remember to:

o Think primarily branding when you use their service
o Make sure the page you chose to show loads quickly
o Make your web page unusual, funny, catchy!
o And, if possible offer something they must grab right now for free.

The world works in mysterious ways. I was going to write about the other one I joined yet this one came popping up as a chance to make my point about using all available resources at your disposal.

Many will poo-poo this type of traffic, but with free branding you cannot go wrong. Test every type of system out there, keep the good, eliminate the unproductive. But if you never try, you’ll never know.

Happy surfing!

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Tags: auto surfing, capabilities, free branding, free traffic, start pages, startpages, traffic exchange

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Increase Website Traffic, branding, get paid to, resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.