Getting Targeted Traffic To Your Website

Lesson #1 - Free Traffic Exchanges

As I just mentioned, targeted traffic is all that matters in this business.

Think about it like this. If you owned a store and had hundreds of window shoppers visiting your store each and every day, but you never sold anything, would you be happy? Of course you wouldn't. You’re not in business to have people just look at your stuff. You’re in business to SELL your stuff! So lots of traffic can be a good thing, but if these visitors will never buy anything, then it’s time to get visitors that will.

That’s what this whole series is about. Getting targeted traffic to your website(s) and converting these visitors into sales, because we’re not in this business to make friends. We’re in this business to make money. I’m not saying you can’t make friends along the way, because I certainly have, but if your main goal is to make friends online, then start your own blog. For the rest of us who are in this to make some extra income, let’s get started.

You obviously found my TrumpTraffic site because no doubt you were looking for ways to increase traffic to your website, or possibly your affiliate marketing program(s). There are so many free traffic exchange sites available today, so it is hard to know which ones work and which ones don't. But the bottom line is, many of them do work, and it's up to you to find out which ones are working for you and which ones aren't.

Some free traffic exchanges may convert sales like crazy for one person, and be a complete waste of time for another. If everyone and their uncle were promoting GoogleCash in the same traffic exchange for example, then chances are pretty good you will not sell many GoogleCash ebooks. Don't get me wrong. GoogleCash by Chris Carpenter is a great ebook. I bought it while ago and it has some great information in it. But when people see the same ad over and over again, they get desensitized to it. Don't fall into this trap. It's one thing to try and sell a very popular product/service/ebook etc, but it's another thing when a million other people are trying to do it too. Competition is a good thing, because it validates your market, but too much competition is tough and it's time to move on to something else.

We all know clicking on ads in a free traffic exchange can be very boring, monotonous and can take a lot of time. That's why you need to make the best of your opportunity or you will just be wasting a lot of your time and effort on something that just isn't working. If you have your own niche website, then you already differentiated yourself from the pack. If you are an affiliate marketer, then you need to find products/services that everyone else isn't promoting, especially within that particular traffic exchange.

How do you know if something is working or not?

Well, there are lots of expensive tools you could purchase like HyperTracker or free ones like SiteTracker or Andale for tracking your hits and/or conversions. When you're promoting affiliate programs directly, this becomes difficult because you don't have full control over the HTML code. If you are promoting your own niche website, you're ahead of the game. That means, most likely you have your site being hosted by a professional web hosting service and you have complete control over it's content and access to the sites HTML code, and it's much easier to add tracking code to your pages. If you cannot add tracking code to your website or individual affiliate program links, you do have other options. It just takes a little more effort and manual work on your end to keep track of what's working and what isn't.

One way is to use a few of the free traffic exchanges, to see if your sales pick up. I would only suggest a few to start with, and then if they don't seem to be doing well for you, test out a few more. When you do find a group of free traffic exchanges that are generating sales, then narrow those down until you find the one that's working. Now concentrate your efforts on that exchange because that's the one you want. At least for now for the program or website your promoting.

As I mentioned, your individual promotion is everything. If you're trying to promote something everyone else is, I don't care what traffic exchange service you're using, your sales conversions are going to be very low, or nothing at all. You cannot always blame the exchange. Sometimes you have to look at yourself and think if you're doing all you can to make sales.

There are thousands of free traffic exchanges today, so how do you choose?

There are many good ones and many more bad ones that are a complete waste of time. Needles to say, TrumpTraffic is a great free traffic exchange web site to help get targeted traffic to your website, but there are more that you should consider using. Aside from our exchange, I would recommend the following free traffic exchanges. These are the cream of the crop today, and occasionally they shift in order, but they are usually in the top 10. Here are the top 7 free traffic exchanges as I write this for January 2007:

1. WebBizInsider

2. TrafficSyndicate25 (TS25)

3. TrafficG

7. Click2k5

There are also paid autosurf programs that are great for earning money but not very good for advertising your websites. If you want to get more quality traffic to your website, stick with free traffic exchanges. But if you're looking to make a great income while surfing, check out the paid autosurf programs. The best ones today are listed on the CashCurve website and it has a great paid autosurf section you can learn so much more about these programs

Tomorrows lesson will be about writing and submitting articles to get lots of targeted traffic to your website and boost your website in the free search engine rankings as well!

PS: If you're going to be using multiple free traffic exchanges, and I recommend that you do, your first priority should be to pick up a multi-tab web browser like FireFox. The FireFox browser is free and runs on PCs and MACs. You can get your own free copy here:

The tabs feature allows you to have one web browser open with multiple tabs each going to a separate website. You could easily put 5 or 6 of your free exchange sites in these tabs, and earn credits for all of them at the same time. So instead of surfing for 1/2 an hour or an hour earning 200 hits for one exchange, you could earn 200 hits for 5 exchanges in the same amount of time. This is a huge time saver and multiplies your earned hits by 5X or 6X.

PSS: Whenever you're surfing the internet, whether it's using a free traffic exchange or not, you need to protect yourself from viruses and spyware attacks. If you don't use any of these preventative tools, or they are not up-to-date, then you are playing with fire. It's not a matter of if you'll be attacked but it's a matter of when. Everyone today uses Anti-Virus software such as Security Shield 2007, but not many people consider Spyware or Adware to be a threat to their computers and private information. Remember to always keep your anti-virus software up-to-date. If you don't have Spyware/Adware detection and removal tools, you can get a free copy of SpywareDoctor and protect yourself before you do get attacked by some of these threats. 

See you tomorrow!

Andrew