Network Marketing - What Are Traffic Exchanges

A traffic exchange is a type of website on the Internet, which provides a service for network marketer to exchange of traffic.


Usually, a traffic exchange site receives submissions of websites. They sign up for traffic exchange networks.

The person who submitted the website then has to browse other member sites on the exchange program to earn credits, which enable their sites to be viewed by other members through the surf system.

This increases the number of visitors to all the sites involved.

Exchanges generally enforce a 2-to-1 or 4-to-1 credit ratio, meaning members earn 0.5 or 0.25 in credit for visiting one member site, and each credit is translated to one page view for them.

However, this ratio can often be upgraded to better ratios such as 1-to-1.

In theory, website owners would visit other sites through the exchange's surf system and thus channel more traffic back to their own sites.

As the viewers are all website owners or network marketers, it is possible that some of them might find certain member sites interesting and thus make note of them on their own sites, sending more traffic their way.

Most traffic exchange programs also impose a time limit when members are browsing, ranging from 10 seconds to 60 seconds.

Some incorporate the use of CAPTCHA to ensure user interaction; although there are exchange programs that let members browse without manually clicking, automatically moving on to the next site in rotation once the time limit is up, these methods are called AUTOSURF.

A CAPTCHA (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human.

Almost all traffic exchange programs are free, although many of them offer special features to paid members and offer credits for purchase.

Almost all traffic exchange programs encourage users to build their own referral networks, which would in turn help the referrers accumulate more credits.

For example, when a referred member receives credits through browsing, the referrer would get a small portion of the credits earned.


In practice, traffic exchange programs are mostly used by small business owners or network marketers who either want free advertising or use the exchange programs for low-budget advertisement campaigns.

The usefulness of at least some of these programs is doubtful, as many people simply forget sites once the time limit is up as they are only interested in promoting their own site.

Also, a small number of users may simply purchase credits because of their low price.

Also, traffic exchange programs tend to exaggerate their own effectiveness.

For example, exchange programs often use attractive and misleading slogans such as "Get Traffic To Your Website" or "Watch Your Traffic Explode".

Despite those slogans, the delivered visitors are often untargeted and unlikely to return.

Advertising on traffic exchanges is similar to advertising on TV. The only way to successfully use a traffic exchange is to advertise a page specifically designed to catch the user's attention. Otherwise it is easily ignored.