It’s a beautiful day where ever you are. You’re alive, you’re relatively healthy, you are reading this from a country that allows you to pursue the idea or the actual goal of running your own business, and you’re inside and dry.

I think back sometimes, to just a short while ago, I didn’t have all of these privileges, and was not on the road to living my life on my own terms. And even then, though I was struggling to push past go, just the journey itself was an education.

And I love to learn.

So today, though I haven’t reached the mountaintop as quickly as I’d like to, I’m still getting there, I still have the honor of being able to puruse that dream. And I can just feel it, ready to fold inside my fingers and languish happily.

Thank you all for being a part of that dream.

Okay, enough with my metaphysical ramblings – though I sincerely hope your day is going beautifully too – if it’s not, remember that sometimes it’s just a matter of perspective and attitude. 80% of our obstacles are self-imposed.

Which bring us to our topic of the day. It’s Traffic Thursdays round these parts. I’m trying to think of issues I haven’t covered – what are the ways you can get traffic to your site, and how do you get started? Of course, today, since it is Traffic Thursday, we’re not necessarily focused on just the free ways to do this.

In the past, talked about linking, free search engine listings, paid search engine listings, publishing articles, promoting your ezine as a way to market your site, using your RSS feed, traffic exchanges of all kinds (pop-under, manual, text links), a little about blogging (which we’ll come back to), just a bit about posting to forums.

One thing we haven’t talked about lately is how to convert the visitor once they arrive at your site. And I’ll have a tip on that in just a few minutes… stay tuned.

Thats pretty much a wrap for today. I’ll probably incorporate my tip about text-link exchanges in an Extra later on today or tomorrow, depending on how this flu is treating me.

Upcoming News

You probably noticed today that I didn’t number todays tips. I’ve decided to go back through to the beginning of the tip series and number all the ones that weren’t part of a special series. That way when you come to the forums you can ask me a question, and I’ll know exactly what you’re talking about, because you can ask me about Tip #77, instead of, “you know that one where you talk about…”.

RIght now there are four series running, and I’ll consolidate those and turn them into quick guides for you – there the one about doorway pages, one regarding Traffic Exchanges that I just completed, a Traffic Seeker Toolbox series, and a Free Traffic Methods series. The latter two are an on-going study that isn’t quite done… I plan on scheduling the conclusion with the release of the Free Traffic Primer this month.

Well, I’m sleepy again. It doesn’t take much with my current weakened immune state. If you see me on the street, I’m telling ya, cross… this is the nastiest virus I’ve had in a minute….

Ta!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Traffic Exchange Overview by Type

Auto-Surfs

The Good

It’s a nice theory – real human beings viewing your site, and the opportunity for others to see your site, all hands free. If used correctly, can raise your Alexa rating a little.There’s no monetary investment.

The Bad

Does anyone really see your site? For ost people viewing from the States, the answer is a definite no. But for some reason, I still get email every few months from one or two people who say they saw my site on an auto-exchange. I haven’t used one in ages, but I still get credits for people who joined through me. I normally transfer those to new sites that haven’t hit any Alexa browsers yet.

The Ugly

Be wary of any system you can run unattended. it’s not that the traffic exchanges themselves are malicious. It’s that sometimes people will change the site they are getting credits to in the system long enough to slide in a pop-up ad or change your start-page. If you’re not going to be nearby to watch the auto-surf, it’s really not worth the trouble, is it?

The Tip

While the exchanges themselves are mostly not of great benefit to you, they sometimes help your initial Alexa rating if the exchange is big enough. And there are some that have games like solitaire in the navigation bar that encourage folks to be present while the exchange is running. But for the most part, they are a waste of time.

Some people still swear by them – if you see some benefit to them that I don’t, please feel free to comment.

Personally, I don’t necessarily see an auto-surf itself as anything to get excited about. But here’s a hint…. many of the people who own auto-surfs might be getting a link from…

I’ll continue this series in just a moment with start-page exchanges.

Do traffic exchanges really work, and if you are on a budget, are they worth your time? That’s the central question behind today’s tips. It being Traffic Thursday, we’ll also get into some discussion of other ways of getting traffic through traffic exchanges that aren’t necessarily free.

The types of traffic exchanges you should be aware of are auto-surf, manual, banner, pop-up/pop-under, and start-page. The basic premise behind these trades are the “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” theory. You get a certain number of visits from each site that you visit.

I don’t actively use most of the traffic exchanges any more, but I have enough credits from other people joining through my referral links that I still get visits from them. I’m telling you this just so you’ll know that now that I am able to spend the money, I rarely use these methods, though they still bring me traffic.

In my next few tips, I’ll discuss give you an overview of the good, the bad and the ugly experiences I’ve had with them, as well as what I learned is the proper use of traffic exchanges if you ever hope to earn any money using through them. It’s possible – but it’s also tricky.

When I first started out with FreeTrafficDirectory.com I was just trying to win a bet. Some colleagues bet me that I couldn’t get my site in Alexa’s Top 100K, get spidered and included by Google, create and sell a profitable product, and get a PR of at least 3 in 90 days spending less than $100. I won in 34 days flat, and if memory serves I spent less than $30, including my hosting fees.

I couldn’t use Google AdWords, I couldn’t solicit people from my other sites to visit, and I couldn’t go on a reciprocal link campaign. I had to get my visitors as if I was just starting out for the first time and do these things as if I was nearly broke.

One of the primary tools I was able to use was the traffic exchange method. I quickly learned that all of them are not created equal. I’ll go a bit further into this on Thursday. In the meantime, here is a list of the ones I joined.