In recent years, one of the favorite means of free advertising is manual traffic exchange, which permits you to promote your site to other members by exchanging some of your time for the other members’ time, hence its name. It is actually the equal exchange of surfing hours between you and other members when viewing each other’s sites.
Time allotted for surfing
A traffic Exchange program allows its members to surf other members’ websites for a specific time frame ranging from 10 to about 40 seconds. During this short surfing session, the viewer has to click a button, number, picture or any other item as specified by the program before another site can be visited.
This is in contrast with the auto surf traffic exchanges which automatically replaces the site after the time has lapsed. The viewer has a passive role of just watching the computer monitor.
Exchange ratio is different from one program to another. There are good programs which usually have a 1:1 ratio, which means that if a member views one site, his site will also be viewed by another member equally. However, many programs offer 2:1 ratio, a scheme that will find the members allotting more surfing time. A program with a surfing ratio of 2:1 means you have to view two sites before your site is viewed by a member. With such programs, you can still be able to avail of 1:1 ratio, if you upgrade your membership. On the other hand, if you are a free member, you will need to surf more sites to earn credits for your site to be viewed.
Anti-cheating techniques
How are we sure that our sites are being viewed by real persons? Actually, the typical manual surf exchange has some built-in anti-cheating devices or techniques, which are in the form of some items or perhaps the location of the items in the program that you need to click. If there is a variety in the click’s location, this is a strong indication that a person is actually in front of the monitor viewing and surfing your site. Such variations in the location can be the horizontal and vertical locations of the screen. Other programs require members to choose a particular item or picture displayed on the monitor. Still other programs place cheat-testing items all throughout the site wherein the members are required to do some actions to allow them to surf further and continue earning credits.
Most manual traffic exchange programs have pop-up requirements and do not permit sites which cannot be surfed within the surfing frames. Some programs actually allow two pop-ups while others do not permit any pop-up at all. Sites that are not viewable with the surfing program’s frame are known as frame breakers and are usually disallowed by most traffic exchange programs. Frame breakers cause members are thrown out of the hit exchange and are required to log in again to continue with surfing. To avoid such inconvenience, you must make sure that you comply with the traffic exchange requirements before you join it.