There is however a way to get tons of visitors for free, and ensure they actually stay on your site for anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. Easily time enough for them to see what your site's about, and hopefully make them curious enough for them to stay even longer.

I am, or course talking about free traffic exchanges. No, they're not new and they are often misunderstood.

The first thing you need to know is that you get what you put in. What I mean by this is that if a traffic exchange offers you say 5,000 hits for free when joining without you having to do anything, odds are you'll never see very many visitors as no-one needs to surf ? they each have 5,000 free hits!

I am not saying that you should avoid all exchanges that offer a signup bonus, just make sure that what they are offering sounds to good to be true ? it usually is.

Remember that quality is key, and you can usually tell this by the site's stats (if they have them available). Ideally you want to find exchanges that not only have lots of members, but also have lots of pages surfed each day ? watch out for sites that have say 5,000 members, but only 300 pages surfed each day.

Avoid automatic traffic exchanges, as these don't require any manual intervention so the user may start surfing and then go and watch TV or whatever, no-one will actually see your site. This is the whole benefit of a manual traffic exchange, the user must wait until a timer expires before they click a button to view the next site. You can be sure that in the mean time, they will read each site they see, even if it is just a cursory glance.

Now, to really get the most out of free traffic exchanges you need to advertise a simple yet eye-catching web page. Your page should grab someone's attention and arouse their curiosity, causing them to open the page in a new window to find out more. That sort of visitor is priceless, and there are many out there, especially if you are offering something other webmasters might be interested in or find useful as all the users are webmasters themselves!

Once you have gotten started with an exchange, you can advertise your own referral link and you'll also receive credits for pages that your referrals view. Another alternative to referrals is to buy a ?Pro? account if the exchange offers them. Usually these accounts will give you a certain number of web/banner/text credits each month for a small fee. A word of warning here though, some offer value, some clearly do not. Always way up what you think the credits are worth and then decide if it is good value or not.

Lastly, to ensure you are getting the most out of your traffic exchange(s), always try to spend about 1 hour each day surfing them. You'll be surprised how quickly you start seeing quality traffic on your site!