TIPS and TRICKS
Click exchange programs
Because they are simple to use and promise fast results, click exchange programs have become very popular among webmasters. While all kinds of sites participate in them, especially those that have a hard time attracting traffic with other methods seem to have embraced the idea. This means that the majority of members in most click exchange programs are trying to push the latest get rich quick-scheme, advertise MLM programs or send visitors to an online store that pays the member a commission every time a person sent by him purchases something.
Before we continue, let me explain what a click exchange program is. The concept is simple and at first, it feels like it makes a lot of sense. As you know, there are vast amounts of sites out there that have owners who believe their site isn't receiving the traffic it should be. Many of them also spend plenty of time on the web, wandering around searching information or just to have fun.
Click exchange programs attempt to merge these two things together. They form a network out of the participating sites and webmasters then surf on it. For each page visited by the participant, someone else will visit his, so the programs make it possible to get traffic just by doing what you would have done anyhow. To sum it up in one phrase, click exchange programs can be described as "If you visit my site, I'll visit yours".
Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? But does it work or is it just another dead end in the maze that is website promotion? In order to get an answer to that question, I participated in four popular click exchange programs and monitored the results. ClickThru, the Traffic Generation Network, Ezhits4u and the iLoveClicks Network all talked the talk on their front pages, but could they walk the walk?
The results:
| Program | Unique visitors | of which actually did anything | Percentage |
| ClickThru | 170 | 10 | 5,88% |
| iLoveClicks | 170 | 3 | 1,76% |
| Ezhits4u | 170 | 2 | 1,18% |
| TGN | 170 | 6 | 3,52% |
| Total | 680 | 21 | 3,09% |
Now, let's look at what is behind those numbers. The "Unique visitors" field means just what it says, it is the number of unique visitors received from the network. However, keep in mind that it does NOT mean that I had to visit 170 sites to receive 170 unique visitors, as occasionally the same person was sent to my site more than once by the network. These multiple visits were counted as one, just as long as it was the same person. Visitors from some known proxy servers have been excluded from the above statistic for this reason. I'd estimate that in order to receive 170 unique visitors, you'd have to visit 180-200 sites depending on the click exchange program you are using and on your luck.
Moving on, the "of which actually did anything" field means the number of visitors that decided to venture further to the site or bookmark it. This number measures the interest displayed by the audience towards what I was offering. A high number of such visitors compared to the total visits naturally means that the people truly wanted to learn more about my pages. A low number on the other hand is a telltale sign of the fact that they just wanted to get someone visit their own pages and left after they had spent the minimum 30 seconds staring at my front page.
The percentage field probably doesn't need much explaining, but let's briefly look at it anyhow. A percentage of one means that from 100 unique visitors sent by the network, one bothered to explore this site. A percentage of two means.. well, you get the point. If you want to compare the results produced by these programs with some other traffic generation method, you might be interested to know that around 80% of visitors that come to my site via a friendly link from a high-quality on-topic site take the time to browse through multiple pages.
While I could predict the outcome to some extent, it still disappointed me. After all, this site is a guide on how to promote your site - A Promotion Guide - and the audience consisted of webmasters that were clearly attempting to get traffic, even if it meant spending some time in front of the computer. This leads me to believe that personal sites or online stores should expect a result that is even worse.
Observations and thoughts on the audience of click exchange programs
Aside from the fact that the visitors from click exchange programs are untargeted traffic and tend to vanish in 30 seconds, what did I learn about them? By looking at my logs, I could notice that many participants seemed to be members in more than one click exchange program. It is difficult to give a good estimate on how common such behavior is, especially because the sample I have is very small, but I'd say that at least 25%, but possibly 50% or more, have a thirst for clicks that is not satisfied by one program alone.
This partially explains why the quality of visitors is so low, since people that have joined several click exchange programs usually use them all at once. Because the visitor is continuously jumping from one browser window to another instead of spending time on the sites, this renders the 30 second minimum visit required by many of these programs useless.
Whether there are any significant differences in the quality of traffic sent by different programs is hard to tell. Again, the sample is too small to say anything for sure, but ClickThru does seem to be slightly better than the others. However, it is still far from the point where I could say that participating in it could be reasonably justified.
As a conclusion based on the above data, I believe that one visitor from a good reciprocal link is equal to at least 15-80 visitors from a click exchange program. To reach 21 people who are interested about your site, you'll have to spend two hours, seven minutes and thirty seconds if you use four click exchange programs at the same time and spend an average 45 seconds on a site.
By spending five dollars on advertising your site in a PPC search engine, you would be likely to receive a similar result. Is it worth the trouble? I'll let you decide. However, if I were you, I'd stop reading this article right now and would select some other one that is about a more effective promotion tool.
Desperate attempts to improve the results
If you have been paying attention, you are well aware that my thoughts about click exchange programs are less than flattering. Still, it would be dishonest to say that it is impossible to improve the results achieved in this test. So, if I haven't been able to convince you to stop using these programs, I might as well give you some tips on how to get the most out of them.
The first thing you should do is to sign up with at least four programs. This might sound a little odd, as just a while ago I complained that people who are doing so are partly the reason why these programs are so useless. Unfortunately, it is a "tragedy of the commons" kind of thing. It would be best if everyone used only one program, but because that is not happening, you might as well maximize the amount of clicks you can get in an hour. So, there's a four program minimum in this game and to top it all off, you'll have to use them all at the same time.
In most situations, a little planning before rushing into action is a good idea and this one is not an exception. Before signing up to anything, you should create a page where you are going to direct the visitors you'll receive. Directing them to your front page is usually a waste of time, because they are in too much hurry to read long texts or appreciate your beautiful design.
The page where the traffic from click exchange programs is directed should be simple and go straight to the point. Use a very large heading to get their attention, then briefly explain why they would benefit from browsing your site or reading more about your wonderful product. You should also ensure that your creation loads up fast even on slow connections. Due to these restrictions, the result won't be very beautiful, so it probably is a good idea to ensure that only people from click exchange programs see it. Don't link to the page from other pages and use a robots.txt file to keep search engine spiders from indexing it.
The last thing to remember is that your content or offering has to have appeal to the people who use these programs. This means that sites targeted at webmasters probably perform better than others. Also, pages that have content that is both easy and fast to browse through, such as humor sites or pages that have pictures of women in swimsuits might stand a chance, even while they shouldn't expect too great results either.
Needless to say, a site that has 400 pages of scientific material about global warming would be lucky to get one in a thousand click exchange program users to do anything else than promptly go away.
