There are advertisements, articles and more that all state how great these traffic exchanges are. But are they really worth the time and effort they require? Will you really get a lot of traffic and if you do get traffic, is it good, purchasing traffic?

There are many traffic exchanges; TS25, Traffichits, Traffic Swarm, TrafficG, etc... If you can think of a subject there is probably a traffic exchange named after it - there's even Mafia Traffic and Dead hits. The basic idea is that you click on a website and watch it for 10-30 seconds and for every 1-3 sites you view 1 person will view your site. This can be quite tedious as to get a sizable amount of traffic you must view an awful lot of websites.

Most of these traffic exchanges have come up with an upsell from the free traffic exchange. For a set fee around $10-$30 per month you get 1,000 or so free credits and a quicker timer or a better conversion 1:2 instead of 1:3 or similar. The problem here is that most of this traffic is seen as robotic by the search engines so it will ot help much in your ranking. This traffic is also people just like you trying to get traffic. Very, very few will have any interest in your product or site and most will click right through to the next screen. So yours doesn't even fuully load - in other words they won't even see your site. Yes, there are sales made through the traffic exchanges, but it is so low of a conversion that you must really visit tens of thousands of pages for each conversion/sale.

Most traffic exchanges do have a virulence aspect built in which can help, but just like with Mary Kay and any MLM program, only the first program participants will reap much from this. You need a huge downline for it to be worth your time and this can take a long time to build. Just like Mary Kay, there are only 10 or so people per exchange getting most of the results. The rest are basically wasting their time and helping others (their sponsors) to get rich.

There are better ways to spend your time. Write articles and submit them to sites like ezinearticles for maximum readership. This will give you traffic that is virulent and long lasting. And it isn't a scam like MLM, its just you and your site links getting all the benefits. If you write interesting and helpful articles you will get great, targeted traffic. Ezinearticles even has numerous pages devoted to help you learn what to write and how to writ it to get maximum effect. You can also do press releases and word of mouth through forums and other free sites. In the long run you will do much better. Traffic exchanges are a waste of time. Don't take my word for it - try them and you'll see why I'm right.