Internet has become both a market and a centre for marketing. In the "brick-and-mortar" world, where big companies can squeeze out smaller ones from their markets, the internet offers safe places like the free traffic exchange. They are very helpful for small businesses that don't have the money to spend on advertising to compete with big businesses.
Free traffic exchanges can be thought of as opt-in clubs that only other people who make products or provide services can join. When someone joins one of these exchanges, they have to look at the web pages of other members. To join a traffic exchange, you have to send in your website, which is then put into a rotation with the hundreds of thousands of other websites that are already members. (This works best for people who have fast internet.)
Most of the time, there are two types of these exchanges: auto surf and manual. In the first, the exchange keeps turning the pages of the web browser by itself. To change pages in a manual exchange, you have to click on a graphic or banner control. The credit system is used by most exchanges. You earn points by staying on a website for a certain amount of time, like 30 seconds. The more time you spend on sites, the more credit you get. But when another member visits your site, your credit goes down. With more credit, your website will be shown more often, which will make it more effective and reach a wider audience. You can sign up for these exchanges easily. Most just request some personal information and your URL.
But you have to be very careful when picking a traffic exchange that will work for your business. Choose one with a lot of members, as this will help you get more attention. Demography is one thing that can help make an exchange go well. You should make sure that your business is like the ones on the exchange. Let's just say that a person who makes handcrafted china won't be able to get out of a trade with people who sell leather goods. The drawback of this is that in an exchange where everyone is offering similar services, you would have to work harder to insure that your site does not get lost.
For beginners, it's always a good idea to join a few exchanges, both ones that run automatically and ones that you have to run yourself. You can look at all of the sites and then choose the one that works best for you. On the other hand, the manual ones are better in the long run because they are more likely to actually sell. Use a web browser with more than one tab. This is one of the tricks of the trade. Even though only one window is open, the browser keeps running several websites in different tabs. This makes it easy to look at many exchanges at the same time.
