Blog Traffic Exchanges.

[Peter JC Ikin]

Ive been experimenting recently with blog traffic exchanges such as blogexplosion and blogmad. Theres no doubt that these sites bring extra traffic to your blog but one thing that has been on my mind recently is regarding the quality of the traffic that they bring.

A concern that I have is that a lot of the people that use these services are there simply to promote their own blog and will not spend any real amount of time reading your content and ideally become a regular visitor.

has anybody had any long term experience with using these types of services in building a blog readership as opposed to simply increasing traffic.

[Blaine Moore]

A concern that I have is that a lot of the people that use these services are there simply to promote their own blog and will not spend any real amount of time reading your content and ideally become a regular visitor.
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I haven't bothered with it for exactly that reason.

[Yaro]

I remember traffic exchanges from way before blogs came on the scene and they were terrible.

By definition you don't get targeted traffic from them, at least not enough to make it worth your while if you have a specific niche. If you sort of blog about general stuff then a general audience coming in is okay (but probably won't stick around).

There are much better alternatives for blog traffic to spend your time and energy on.

[James]

I'd only use blogexplosion or traffic buying sites if I was after a quick rush of newsletter subscribers or something.

[Peter JC Ikin]

Thanks for your replies everyone.

From looking through my site stats I can see the increase in traffic coming from the traffic exchanges but then the traffic falls back down to its normal trend when I dont use the sites for a couple of days. I was already moving towards the conclusion that it was a waste of my time due to the lack of any short term results. I was kind of hoping for some long term benefit, but if nobody has gained anything in terms of readership then I will probably knock this idea on its head.

[Aitch]

I used to think that if only I could increase traffic everything would be ok. I had a main local sponsor who put his ads on my site in exchange for exposure to his thousands of visitors and members. Within an instant I could see the traffic quadruple as he announced my home page in his newsletters.

The problem was, as has already been pointed out, the extra traffic was general, and curious folks were clicking out faster than they were clicking in. In fact, the majority were recorded on my stats as staying for under 5 seconds.

We've since parted company and 6 months down the line my traffic has gone up considerably (around 12,000 monthly visitors) and the site doesn't even show on Google, or other search engines, for popular search terms. Almost all the visitors today are there because they want to be and find me through links on other sites.

Old fashion promotion methods may take more time but the visitors are targeted and contribute to building the site's overall reputation and longevity.

Aitch