There are two types of web site traffic exchanges available today. One is called a Free Traffic Exchange and the other is a Paid Autosurf. These are two completely different services. If you understand the differences between them, you can use both to your advantage.

A free traffic exchange is one of the better ways for web site owners to get free website traffic to their sites or affiliate marketing campaigns. Free Traffic Exchanges allow you to manually surf other members websites, and for each viewing, you get so many of your own URLs and banners added into the rotation for other members to see. There are hundred of free traffic exchanges online today, and each one has thousands of members surfing each day. Thats a lot of potential traffic you can get for little or no cost for your advertising efforts. All you need to do is spend some time surfing the exchanges to get credits for your websites to be viewed by thousands of potential customers.

Paid Autosurf programs pay members a fee for surfing websites in their exchange. Their hope is that as you surf, you will be interested in their clients offers and make a purchase or at least let them capture your e-mail address so they can try to up-sell you later. Also, as the name Autosurf would indicate, you do not have to view each website as they rotate. You could click on the surf button and walk away for 5 minutes until the autosurf session is complete.

The benefits of these two services depend on what your main objective is. If you want to advertise your website or affiliate program, you are much better off joining a free traffic exchange. If you want to earn money each day and could care less about advertising anything, you would be better of joining a Paid Autosurf program. Free traffic exchanges all but force members to view each and every website they visit and require them to manually click after viewing each one. These manual traffic exchanges have somewhat of a captive audience. For free members to get their websites shown in rotation for other members to see, they must surf the exchange, one website at a time. This is one of the best ways to very cheaply get your website or promotion in front of many potential customers.

Some free traffic exchanges offer paid incentives for their Pro members. For example if someone upgrades their free membership to a Pro membership, they can start earning money for the credits they earn. If they surf enough, they could actually get paid cash for their efforts. But the problem with this is the free traffic exchanges dont usually pay out lots of money, since most of their members are free. They can generate substantial income, but their business model is not geared around making large payouts to members.

The Paid Autosurfs on the other hand are setup for generating members money. They pay you for performing a service and some of them pay you quite well. There are many ways these companies make money. They get paid from advertisers, to investing in the Forex (foreign exchange) market to playing the odds. So many people who join these programs dont understand how to use them. Many of these people lose money. The membership fees you pay to earn your daily gains on are not returned. You earn money from your membership fee amount. So if you invested $30 and never surfed a website, then guess what? Youre out $30. If you only surfed half of the days, you lost money. If you dont have the time to spend on these programs each day surfing, then dont join them. You also need daily access to a computer with a web browser to earn money with these programs. If you dont, then these programs are not for you.

So the bottom line is, if youre a website owner or direct marketer, one of the best ways you could advertise your business to many potential customers very inexpensively, would be to use a free traffic exchange. If you just wanted to earn money for surfing multiple websites each and every day for a certain number of days, then Paid Autosurf programs are a better choice.

Copyright 2005 East Tech LLC

This article was posted on December 22, 2005