Do I hear any arguments to the contrary?

Let's make some really critical distinctions right now between Traffic Exchange hopefuls and Traffic Exchange professionals and how they use Traffic Exchange Credits

Traffic Exchange hopefuls click for credits, often for hours at a time. They click for credits without a real focus or purpose and often without any real hope. They have been sold and bought the lie that manually clicking for credits is a worthwhile past time.

Well let's do some math.

Let's assume that your time is worth $20 per hour.

How many credits can you earn in an hour using multi tabbed browsing with 5 exchanges open (any more and it doesn't become effective) as a free member at each exchange?

Well, over an hour, you may visit between 120 and 300 sites at each exchange (depending on timer allocation) and earn between one third and one half a hit as a free member at each exchange so over that hour you may earn if you're lucky 500 hits.

Those 500 hits cost you $20 of your time.

At the time of writing Easy Hits 4 U were charging under $6 for 1000 credits, Traffic Splash were charging $7.99 for 1000 credits, StartXchange were charging $10 and Traffic Taxis were charging $9.99 for 1000 credits.

Where is the value?

I mean the attraction of working from home is freeing up time. I don't see any attraction in working from home if it involves sitting in front of a computer screen and clicking for credits hour after hour. Do you?

But what about the downline credits? I hear you ask.

Good question - if you have a downline then that's great. They will earn you credits, they'll be free credits and they add to your overall business viability, but you cannot rely upon your downline to keep surfing unless they're succeeding, so you'd better have the time to spare to offer them support and encouragement. It's a question of working smarter not harder.

Let's be perfectly frank.  If you think you can run a business for no cost you are doomed to fail. On the other hand if you think you can just throw a fistful of money at advertising, you will fail also(albeit a little more spectacularly).

So what does the Traffic Exchange professional do?

They buy credits and pro memberships at the best Traffic Exchanges

They surf a little

They test everything.

They track every advertisement

They constantly monitor their ROI

They ramp things up when they know they're on a winner.

Let's examine each of these in a little more detail.

They buy credits and pro memberships at the best Traffic Exchanges

As I've said. Traffic Exchange professionals aren't going to spend their day clicking for credits - their time is much more valuable.  They are networking, developing products, courses and email messages, responding to clients, making sales, investigating new products.  Their time is worth much more than $20 per hour .  Some of these guys make $50 per hour- even more.  But if you look through the passing parade of faces at StartXchange when you're clicking through the levels, you'll see these guys sitting somewhere at around Level 6 or level seven. They surf regularly but not obsessively.  But you'll see their ads at a disproportionate level to other level 6 and Level 7 users.  Because they've bought traffic - truckloads of it in some cases.

Where are the best Traffic Exchanges?  Until recently I have sworn by the ranking systems of Traffic Hoopla. However, recent developments have led me to try the much less hyped but maybe more transparent Traffic Exchange List.  My advice is to use the Top 10 Exchanges regularly as listed by both Traffic Exchange List and Traffic Hoopla and to occasionally visit the next 10. How many should you be a pro member of and how many credits should you buy?  That comes down to ROI and I'll get to that in a moment.

They Surf a Little

Maybe half an hour per day; maybe two hours tops. They recognise the value of being active in Traffic Exchanges to see what's happening and where the specials are.  They can also use the occasional spot of reverse marketing when they spot a generic lead page being advertised by a hopeful affiliate, with an invitation to email them.

"Hi [insert hopeful affiliate name here], I noticed your ad while surfing today about [insert affiliate product here] I noticed that you were using the product's generic lead capture page and thought that you might be interested in reading my forum post/report/eBook/whatever on using generic affiliate pages. I'd be happy to email you the report if you're interested. Just reply to this address and I'll send you the report

The time it takes to send the email will cost you a couple of advertising credits, but it may open up real dialogue with a real person and who knows where that may lead.

They Test Everything

I mean everything. Every splash page, every squeeze page, every sales page is split tested against a variation. The better performing one is kept and split tested against a new variation.  Constant improvement should be the goal.

They Track Every Advertisement

Internet Marketing Professionals need to know how their dollar is performing.  1000 credits may cost $8. They want to squeeze more than $8 out of it.  If an advertisement isn't performing or an advertising channel isn't performing they need to tweak it or pull it as quickly as possible.  1000 page views is usually enough to know whether an advertising campaign will work or not.

They constantly monitor their ROI

ROI is return on investment. (i.e. cash returned against cash spent)

As you are mainly aiming to capture leads with Traffic Exchanges, working the Return on Investment will appear a little difficult.

However, it is perfectly reasonable to allocate a dollar value per lead capture. Top Internet Marketers will tell you that every list member on their list is worth of an average of $1 per month to them. I think that value is a little high and would prefer to allocate a value of 75c per month to each lead(this value is particularly relevant when you're starting out).

So let's do some math

I buy 10000 page views for $40, from lets say StartXchange.  From those 10000 page views I get twenty leads those leads are theoretically worth $15 per month every month to me.  Am I doing OK?  On the face of it after 6 months I'll be doing pretty nicely, but there are some problems with the scenario.  

After six months I will have spent $240

I now have 120 people on my mailing list. Theoretically I could have earned $295 from my list and if I keep going I'll start to build that small profit into a bigger one. But it's taken me six months to get ahead!

Yes I could tweak the campaign and get more leads, and I would be doing that. But I've also found a way to make the campaign much more viable.

It's called OTO Goldmine and it works a treat. Here's how.

OTO Goldmine is free to join (but the upgrade offer is well worth considering) and members have the opportunity to make pre written pre-made one time offers to subscribers at opt-in.  There are a choice of opt in options with a variety of commission payments, but my experience says that the take up rate on the $19 opt- in offer is about one in fifty -earning me a tidy little commission of $13 for every fifty subscribers. All of a sudden, my Traffic Exchange strategy looks much better and I can afford to spend a little more aggressively!

OTO Goldmine is an absolute must have - I urge you to join it today, it will dramatically improve your  ROI.

Then Ramp Things Up When They Know That They're On A Winner

It's common sense really, once you know that you are going to make a profit on every 1000 page views. Then you can confidently purchase more credits, but be careful. You need to watch your pages to make sure that your conversion rates remain solid.

So what are you? A Traffic Exchange hopeful or a Traffic Exchange professional?