Hit Exchange Programs: Should You Participate?

Some Internet marketing gurus say Hit Exchange Programs are worth trying. But, many webmasters were disappointed by the result. Should you try it or not?

That's an Advertisement
Think of those programs as other sorts of advertisements. For normal advertisements, you use banners or simple texts. When your ads get viewers' attention, people will visit your site. With Hit Exchange Programs, your home page is the ad. When your home page grabs other participants' attention, they will view other pages of your site.

Who Sees Your Site
In order to get good result from advertisements, you have to present your ads to targeted audience. Now, think about who will see your home page when you participate in Hit Exchange Programs. People join the program because they have a Web site to show the world. Otherwise, there is no reason to join. So, all participants are webmasters; webmasters see your Web site. Therefore, if your site is webmaster-related, most likely, you will get not-too-bad results. If your site doesn't have anything to do with webmasters, the result will be awful. Let's say your Web site is all about gardening. You can tell that putting an ad on Entrepreneur magazine is wasting money. Participating in Hit Exchange Programs is almost the same as that. Presenting a gardening Web site to a bunch of webmasters is literally a waste of time.

Quick Stats
Followings are Click-though rates of Hit Exchange Programs I have tried. Hope you can see a rough idea of what you should expect from Hit Exchange Programs. Of course, you can try them and figure out stats by yourself. Those programs are free to join.

autohits.dk 0.17%
topsurfer.com 0.43%
trafficswarm.com 13.11%


At trafficswarm.com, the rate is significantly higher than others. That's because participants are given a list of links, then participants click one of the links they are interested in. (Here is what participants see .) This makes traffic more targeted.

As I said above, if your site isn't webmaster-related, these numbers will be much lower.
other available traffic exchange programs:
trafficattitude.com
AutoSurfHeaven.com
hitshaven.com
maxvisitors.comultimatevisitors.com
awesomevisitors.com
surfersrus.com
extremevisitors.com
autosurfing.us