Winning The Hit Exchange Game
by Ofa Morgan
"How do I get more traffic to your site?" That's the eternal
question. Or to be more precise, "How do I get more targeted
traffic to my pages, people who are going to be interested in
what I have to offer?"
Afterall, there's no point, or rather little point in getting
a steady stream of boxing fans over to your site, if its main
theme is bread making. I said little point because I'm pretty
sure that there are some boxing enthusiasts who are also avid
bread makers, but what would be likelihood of getting that
many over to your bread making site at any given time?
One method of getting targeted traffic to your site is through
the hit exchanges. Now despite what you may have heard about
them, I urge you to give me a chance to explain, why, if hit
exchanges are used in a certain way, they can be a great source
of targeted visitors. Warm responsive prospects who want to
know more about your site and/or business.
Put simply, a hit exchange is a facility that you can use to
get hits to your site in exchange for viewing other people's
sites. Not all exchanges are created equal and two of the
main things to look out for when picking which ones to join
are:
A) anti cheat controls: the top hit exchanges have tight
anti cheat security which prevents the use of auto surf
software. Whilst the use of such programs is very
tempting and attractive, it kind of defeats the point of
the hit exchanges. There'll be more on this later on!
B) the exchange ratio: just how many sites will you need to
view in order to get one visitor to your site? The
smaller the amount of pages you have to visit in order to
get a hit back to your own site, the more productive your
surfing time will be.
The traffic that comes from hit exchanges has been called a
number of things, none of which are particularly savoury -
cheese burger traffic (well, I guess that's pretty savoury in
one sense of the word!), a waste of bandwith, a cheap gimmick.
Well, inspired by another internet marketer's experience with
them, I decided to advertise an ebay auction on one of the
top hit exchanges and ended up getting a much higher winning
bid than I would have done otherwise.
The thing with hit exchanges is that you've got to know how to
use them, otherwise your results will be disappointing. But if
you apply the three tips that I personally use when advertising
on them, you may be pleasantly surprised.
So let's go straight to....
No.1: Create a special page for the traffic exchanges
The maximum amount of time that your site will be given to
load is 30 seconds and the last thing you want is a slow
loading page. It needs to:
a) load quickly which will mean being very sparing with
the graphics and animation.
b) put across the greatest benefit for visiting your site
very clearly.
c) have a quick and easy way for surfers to bookmark your
page. This is very important. When surfing for hits,
you get into a kind of flow, one you don't really want
to interrupt. Having a favourites button will ensure
that people who are pushed for time can always come back
and view your page later.
If you have links to other sites on your special page, it's
best if they open in new windows. That way your visitor
doesn't have to leave the hit exchange.
It's also a good idea to have some form of email capture
facility on your page. Offer surfers something free in
exchange for their email address or use a subscription box
to get sign ups for your newsletter.
No.2: Choose hit exchanges that allow you to select which
category your site falls into
This way, it will be viewed by surfers who've also chosen
this category or similar categories. So your search
optimization site won't get shown to surfers interested in
action/adventure games!
Some exchanges also let you pick the type of sites you
want to see.
No.3: Use hit exchanges that don't allow cheating
Remember I touched on this earlier? It's so important
that I thought I'd talk a bit more about it here. Put
bluntly, hit exchanges that allow cheating aren't worth
too much of your time.
Why? Because while you're faithfully clicking away, and
viewing other people's sites, yours never gets seen because
X number of surfers in that exchange aren't really
surfing at all. In fact they're using some form of surf
automation software that's busy doing the "clicking" for
them!
As I mentioned earlier, this really does defeat the
point of traffic exchanges which is to give some of your
time to view other people's sites to receive the time of
fellow hit exchange members.
Anti cheating controls can take the form of having to
click on a certain number or shape before you can proceed
on to the next page and earn a hit to your site.
Other types include acknowledging receipt of bonus credits
and some even offer cash prizes that you need to claim!
You may have heard a lot of bad things about hit exchanges but
don't be put off by them.
As with most forms of advertising, starting off with free
offers and then marketing your main product(s) and service(s)
will always work better than trying to sell something straight
away.
This is especially true of hit exchanges where people's main
focus is surfing for credits.
Apply the three tips above for better results, and while
surfing, take an interest in other people's pages. Learn from
their mistakes and try and emulate their sucesses. And you
never know, while looking through other people's sites, you
might very well come across that elusive product, service or
bit of information that you've been searching for.
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Ofa Morgan is the owner of Blue Moon Offers, a site where you
can submit your articles, get free content and win a great
prize for your "rant 'n' rave". Find out how at:
http://www.bluemoonoffers.com. She's also a hit exchange
enthusiast and for more details on one of the top traffic
exchanges, visit: http://www.bluemoonoffers.com/wmq.html
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