Traffic Exchanges - Pros and Cons

Many home business owners have little or no advertising budget, but still need exposure to help increase sales.  There are methods of spreading the word about your business that cost you nothing but a few minutes of your time.  (You can refer to this article on advertising your home business for an example)  Traffic exchanges fall into this category, but be aware of the Pros and Cons.

Pros of Traffic Exchanges

• Free to join and use. You never have to pull out your credit card unless you decide to upgrade to a paid account.
• Wide exposure. Traffic Exchanges are globally used, so your page will be seen in as many countries as there are members from.
• Easy to use. Most require only some code and/or text pasted into your account page.

Cons of Traffic Exchanges

• Can eat a lot of your time. Many folks seem to have trouble stopping once they start. That old drive for more kicks in and they keep surfing other people’s sites in order to get more credits for their own pageviews.
• People may not read your ad. Everyone is a member for the same reason you are. Everybody’s clicking, but many may not actually read the pages that come up.
• CANNOT BE USED WITH ADSENSE. Read that again carefully. If the page you are wanting to advertise has AdSense on it, do not use Traffic Exchanges!! It is against Google’s terms of service and you will get your AdSense account banned. Not only that, but you will get paid any money owing to you.
• Works best if you’re promoting advertising as a means of website traffic. Members of Traffic Exchanges are there because they’re interested in increasing traffic (same as you), so if you are offering something that assists in that area, you stand the best chance of success.

Traffic Exchanges can be great things when used properly.  Don’t be put off by this Pros and Cons list, just be aware.  Then, go take advantage of the free advertising resources so readily available to you.

This article is courtesy of Shirley Anderson, one of our amazing featured writers. To learn more about Shirley and how you can get in contact with her, please go to our featured writers section of the blog.