Traffic Exchanges, Safelists

Traffic exchanges and safelists are something I have had a fair amount of experience with.There may have been a time when they were of value. I find traffic exchanges and safelists to be of little or no value in my experience, and I am going to go on and explain why I feel that to be true.

Traffic Exchanges

The idea behind a traffic exchange is that you view other websites for a brief time in order to gain points and have others view your website in exchange. This, of course, is to bring free traffic to your website.

The time you view a website varies depending on which traffic exchange you are using. Thirty seconds is usually the longest. Some use 20,15,10. or even five second increments. Now, think about it. How many websites even  load in five seconds? A lot of people have dial up.

Even worse, are the autosurf traffic exchanges. These don't have to be clicked on, and websites just rotate one after another. Some people even admit that they bring up these traffic exchanges and let their computer run all night to accumulate points. So who sees these websites even if they have time to load?

Many on the internet pitch the manual traffic exchanges because each time a website loads, the user has to click on something on the screen before it will go on and load the next website. The idea behind this is to require that each website have a chance to be viewed, and that is good. But wait! as usual there is a work around!

What has happened with the manual traffic exchanges is special browsers. There are special browsers that will tile several traffic exchanges on your screen at once. Twelve is probably an average. Now think about this, it would be like keeping up with twelve bingo cards. You still have to click on each of these little windows in order to move on to the next set. Do you think anybody sees the websites that are being displayed?

Safelists

Safelists rank about as well with me as traffic exchanges. The idea behind a safelist, is that subscribers have all signed up and agreed to receive email from all the other subscribers. This avoids being accused of spam.

You need two mailboxes to work with safelists. One, so the managers of the safelist can contact you and the other to receive email from safelist members. The mailbox that receives the email has to be a substantial size. The size depends on the number of lists you belong to.

So what happens is, you submit an ad through the safelist and it is circulated to all safelist members. It could be two thousand or ten thousand depending on the safelist. In return you receive all the email that other members are submitting.  If you belong to many lists you get a lot of email. At one time I had forty thousand emails in my box.

The first problem with safelists is that it is comprised of marketers. Everybody is trying to sell something so it is not a fresh market. Another problem is, if you are really into safelists, you belong to what I will call brokers. You sign up and pay a fee and then you can submit through this broker who may have a hundred email lists so you only make one submission. Very convenient but not effective.

More safelist drawbacks are that if you are getting and sending this massive flow of email you need to rent a special box. These boxes have the ability to delete all the email in one click. And even if you are well intentioned, and try to read at least some of the email, you soon get burned out. You see the same headlines in your email box over and over. Soon you know many of them by heart.

Traffic Exchanges and Safelists- Summing Up

Traffic exchanges may have some small value. I have heard some people claim that they have had some success in gaining newsletter subscribers through traffic exchanges. Well maybe.

Safelists may bring you a sale here or there from folks who are new to marketing. They are the only ones who read the email.

My advice is don't waste your time with either traffic exchanges or safelists. Your time is better spent writing articles and submitting them, refining ads for PPC, posting to forums and blogs, social bookmarking, or working on your newsletter. Make your time count.

Well but," traffic exchanges are free you say, and safelists cost very little to manage". Not true! Even if all the safelists you belong to were free to join, and you could find a large enough mailbox for free, even though traffic exchanges are free to join, they cost you time. Time lost cannot be recovered, spend it wisely!

And while I am freely offering my opinion on traffic exchanges and safelists, let me not forget FFA's. No value there either.

Spend your time online with effective marketing methods. In today's internet environment your time is best spent marketing with articles, and also using social bookmarking.

Speaking of spending time wisely, how are your search skills?

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