How To Work With Free Traffic Generators
By Dan J. Fry
Posted Sunday, December 12, 2004
Free traffic?!! Wow! That just sends goose bumps down my spine!
We are all looking for free web site traffic. Search engines are the best sources but you must constantly optimize for top indexing. There are however other sources of free traffic. Making good use of them takes a bit of patience and care.
One of growing popularity, traffic exchanges supply visitors to your site in exchange for traffic which you deliver to the network of sites. These systems allow you to accumulate credits which are then converted in to a predetermined number of viewings of your site either in the form of a link or an actual web page. The following lists some of the most popular systems.
(1) Traffic Exchanges - TrafficSwarm is owned by SixDegrees Media in Sausalito, California, and driven in large part by CEO Wayne Van Dyck, an ex-Wall Street Investment Banker. It is by and far the most well-run and beneficial traffic exchange that I have found to date. You can check it out at (http://www.trafficswarm.com/cgi-bin/swarm.cgi?224700).
Traffic exchanges work by crediting per the amount of traffic you bring to other sites on the network. This can be through your own surfing, referral traffic, or even by purchasing site visits. Most exchanges offer free and paid memberships, with paid members of course obtaining more perks and potentially more targeted traffic.
(2) Banner Exchanges - Banners are known not to have the largest click through rates but can still be of benefit. They typically make use of a 2:1 or lower visibility ratio, meaning that for every 2 times someone views a banner on your site, 1 view of your banner will be shown elsewhere on the network.
The most important aspect is to make your banner highly targeted and not general. Moreover, make sure the exchange program will target your banner topic to sites that attract visitors within your target market. Otherwise your efforts will not prove fruitful. You may have traffic but not from people interested in what you offer. Banners GoMLM is one of the more popular exchanges. I personally use (http://www.superbannertraffic.com) and have had modest success.
(3) Reciprocal Linking - Trading links with other web masters can generate traffic from both the individual site and through better search engine ranking. The later takes time and cannot be rushed. The SE has to crawl a site in order to locate the reciprocal link before the index is updated.
Above all else, you must be diligent, patient, and track what methods work. You must put in the time and care to learn about and tailor them to your particular purpose. If you prefer to dish out the bucks for traffic there are numerous fee-based systems. Pay-per-click is the most popular and can deliver highly targeted visits to your site. Although, whether you benefit or not from the visit, your money is already spent.
About the Author
Dan J. Fry is an independent researcher and owner of e-Kinetic.com, a site devoted to providing resources for small budget home businesses. He has a PhD in Physics and is married with two daughters and two cats. Subscribe to his free E-Zine on home business resources at mailto:e-kinetic@GetResponse.com or by visiting his Online Home Based Business Resources site. He can be reached at mailto:comp@e-kinetic.com.
