Using Traffic Exchanges Effectively

by: William J Thomas

As the Internet continues to evolve, Internet Marketers must also adapt to new methods of advertising brought about by new techologies and the applications that they allow. When I first started marketing on the Internet, most marketers were using the same basic marketing tools consisting of Safelists, Submitters, Hit Exchanges, etc. Nowadays, savvy Internet Marketers rely much less on those "stone age" marketing tools and instead make use of marketing strategies including video with sites like YouTube, and also make wide use of social neworking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

While Social Networking has now become the preferred method of doing business for many, some of these new concepts can be so crowded with people using them that although effective at the core, they may not be as effective to the individual because of many factors involved. To use a mechanical concept, the new concepts are brilliant, but there are simply too many moving parts for the new marketer, and there are too many people doing the exact same thing which dilutes it's power beyond what the old school techniques brought. If you think about it, since the premise is the same, you could still effectively use some of the tried and true traffic generating methods such as traffic exchanges to bring in traffic, and in fact many people are starting to realize the power in incorporating these concepts back into their marketing plan because they bring a good mix of old and new school concepts. In the world of internet marketing, traffic is your life blood, so you should try to use any potential traffic generating resource at your disposal, regardless if it is something everyone is using or not. The bottom line is that your barometer should be results, not popularity of the tool.

With that said, while using traffic exchanges can be an effective means of generating traffic for your site if used correctly, there are things you need to be aware of before embarking into this concept. The first thing to keep in mind is that this concept banks on web browser traffic, so the vehicle of this concept is the browser itself. If you want to make sure you are putting forth the most effective and efficient effort, you will need a good browser to use, one that won't crash or allow viral activity to enter your computer. Unfortunately, the viruses today are much more insidious, and you can easily contract one just by simply loading the wrong page. For the most part the Microsoft browser internet explorer is not very secure and is not coded very well where security is concerned. The Mozilla FireFox browser however is not often attacked by these sites and is light years ahead of the IE browser in security features. In order to make the best use of Traffic exchanges, your computer needs to be running efficiently, and that's why you should be using the latest version of Mozilla's Firefox for browsing.

You also want to make sure in conjunction with this system that your computers antivirus program is also set up with the latest update to make sure your protected from viruses. This is not just a precaution you should make due to the traffic exchanges or internet marketing, it's something you should be well aware of always because again, today's internet is higher tech, but so is the web page security problems. Even FireFox can contract certain website virus scripts, so with both armed your better off. There are some great AVP's that are absolutely free and incredibly powerful. One I use is called Avast, which is free for home users and it catches just about any internet page script that tries to infect your computer. The best thing to do is to set your browser history to 0 days also to protect your computer as many of these viral pages enter through the browser cache folder (temp folder where pages are stored).

The Mozilla FireFox browser is also best set up for traffic exchanges due to some great features and plug-in capabilities. FireFox allows you to set up groups of traffic exchanges that can be set up and configured with a simple click of a button. Setting up several groups extends your surfing power thus your ability to dynamically boost your traffic generation power. In this concept the name of the game is brows-ability, the more you browse the more traffic you can create for your site. Using this concept, you can load multiple pages by using a separate tab for each. You will never have to wait for timers to wind down on certain pages which could take up to 30 seconds a page. The beauty of this system is it doesn't matter if you physically are looking at the page, it just has to be loaded on your computer and technically it is.

Lastly, to get the best out of your traffic exchanges you should be using a broadband internet connection. Having a fast connection is essential and allows multiple pages to load faster. Since the page has to be loaded for a certain amount of time and the timer starts when it is loaded, it would be in your best interests to make sure it loads fast. Keep your computer defragged, your internet cache empty, and your internet connection fast. It may also be a good idea to have plenty of memory on your computer. Your computer is part of the equation and should be a decent speed with a decent amount of memory to handle all the browsing activity at once.Your best bet is to take some time and read up on the traffic exchange concept, and really get to know how it all works. The best place to do this is in a traffic exchange forum where you can ask other users questions and read how others found success. People these days love to talk and help one another out, so it is actually a better time to get into this concept than it used to be for many reasons. Be creative, create your own special custom pages, don't put out the same thing everyone else is, remember others will look at your pages if you have something fresh and exciting to look at!