Traffic exchanges... that eternal clicking and surfing, has for a long time interested me.

I never quite understood why they were supposed to work in the first place, given the greed and selfishness of people in general.

The premise is that you earn visits to your offer/business from other surfers/clickers and you also return the favor. Hence the term, traffic exchange!

From the beginning, I saw a problem with this model of promoting.

Self-interest and rule breaking seems to be the only way that some people know how to do business.

So they spend their energy and skills finding ways around having to view other marketers' website..in effect, they cheat!

As well, just about every Traffic Exchange program on the Internet has an upgrade. So now you can buy thousands of page/website views without having to surf, click on or view others' website.

So who is supposed to be looking at your offer?

I have written to many of the owners of these Traffic exchanges, asking them why people should spend all this time surfing. The ones who answered, have either been vague or sent me more of the same hype that they use to advertise their program.

Recently, I have seen several articles, written by acclaimed "gurus" citing the demise of the Traffic Exchanges.

But were they ever "alive"?

Did traffic exchanges ever work, as promised or as they should have? It is my personal belief and experience that as a marketing tool, Traffic Exchanges, are not effective now and unlikely to become so in the future.

The only reason anyone would surf any of these programs would be to find a business offer, but this can be done more efficiently by visiting one of the search engines, such as Google.

If you have a business, whether e-commerce or "brick and mortar", you want to make money. Your time is one of the best investment that you can make in your business. Spend it wisely! Pursuing unproductive methods will soon grind you down and undermine your confidence.

Learn some of the truly effective methods and formulas that will get you and business noticed and respected on the Internet.

Write helpful articles, use an autoresponder, put up a well designed website as soon as you are able to. Join and contribute sensibly to forums that match your business theme. Buy advertisement or use free tightly targeted free classifieds.