Google Adsense, Traffic Exchanges and Making it all Work

I was inspired to write this article after reading this post from Mike's Money Making Mission, where Mike explains how he has received an e-mail from Google that basically tells him not to use Traffic Exchanges to gain hits to his blog.

In this article I'm going to tell you how I think Traffic Exchanges should be used and when.

What's all the fuss about?

The people at Google Adsense are a bit touchy about what you can and can not do on your website and blog when you display their ad blocks. One of the things they don't like are you using Traffic Exchange Programs like Blog Explosion and Blog Soldiers, they see it as artificially generating page views.

When to use Traffic Exchanges

I still believe that Traffic Exchanges have their place and can be a useful way of getting your site noticed, let me explain. When you first start a blog you are unlikely to be getting much in the way of traffic, so if you are displaying Adsense then you're probably not making very much. You may as well remove Adsense until such time as you've built a steady stream of traffic and this is where Traffic Exchanges come in. Now a lot of people think that Traffic Exchanges are a waste of time because people are just clicking through the sites and not really reading them, just to make credits to show their site. In most cases this is probably true, but if you think of it like TV where most people don't watch the adverts either, but there are some that do. So even if you only catch the attention of 1 or 2 people out of 100, that's still a couple of people who may not have seen your site via other sources. The reason TV advertising is such big business is because it works, if enough people see something the more likely it is that some one will take notice.

Of course Traffic Exchanges should be used along side other means of generating traffic (see my top 6 tips) and once you've built up a sustainable level of traffic via these other means you can them stop using the Traffic Exchanges and add Adsense to your site.

Is that the end for Traffic Exchanges then?

Not necessarily, both Blog Explosion and Blog Soldiers and probably others also offer another service, Banner Ads. Instead of using your credits for getting direct traffic to your site you can use them to buy banner impressions, Blog Explosion offers 36 impressions per credit (to get lots of credits quickly see my article here) and Blog Soldiers offer 20 per credit. Banner impressions don't give you the same level of traffic as the exchanges but it's a good use of those credits and it won't get your Adsense account closed down.

Summary

• Use Traffic Exchanges when you have a new blog with very little traffic.
• Traffic Exchanges can be useful for getting you noticed, more traffic equals more exposure.
• Without lots of traffic it is unlikely you will make any money with Adsense, increase your levels of traffic first.
• Don't use Adsense on your pages at the same time as using Traffic Exchanges.
• Once you're site is receiving reasonable amounts of traffic from sources other than the Traffic Exchanges (this can take a long time, be patient), stop using them and start placing Adsense on your pages.
• Start using your credits for Banner Impressions instead of direct traffic.

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Tags: traffic exchange, google, adsense, blog explosion, blog soldiers, banners, banner impressions

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