If you find yourself joining Traffic Exchanges and surfing other sites to generate more traffic, you already know how effective a traffic exchange can be. TEs attract just the kind of visitors you are probably looking for... those looking to get more traffic to their site, and also looking for things (perhaps what you have to offer) to help their business grow.

But, are you promoting the right thing in the traffic exchanges you belong to?

If you are just starting out your business, chances are you have your promotion page listed as the website to display at all the Traffic Exchanges you belong to. While this may bring you a few sales over time, it is not the most productive way to use that TE at your stage in growing your business. Why? Because it is forcing you to spend the majority of your time surfing the TEs to earn additional displays. Time that can be spent on other traffic generation strategies, time that could be used to actually grow your business.

The key to using traffic exchanges is building your downline!

To see the power of a downline, let's go through an example TE. This exchange offers up to six levels of referral, each level awarding 10% of what that level surfs into your traffic account. Assume that you surf on the average four hours a day to get 1000 visits a day.

When you start promoting your traffic exchange instead of your business, we will assume you are able to attract 10 referrals a week. However, let us further assume that only two of these referrals actively surf, and, if you are effectively using your downline mailer, actively recruiting their own referrals. The final assumption is that all the preceding assumptions carry forward down the line.

After one week, your stats should look something like this:

• Pages views you earned: 7000
• Active referrals (level 1): 2
• Page views earned by level 1 referrals: 7000 (You did not have these referrals all week, so I lowered this a bit)
• Page views you earned from level 1 referrals: 700
• Total page views you earned: 7700

Not too bad, a 10% increase in traffic for the same amount of time spent. But wait! Let's look at week two. Your first week referrals are following your mentoring, and are as successful as you (You are training them that way, right?). So let's look at the results of your efforts this week.

• Pages views you earned: 7000
• Active referrals (level 1): 4
• Page views earned by level 1 referrals: 21000 (your first weeks referrls now had a full week of surfing, second weeks again cut in half)
• Page views you earned from level 1 referrals: 2100
• Active referrals (level 2): 4
• Page views earned by level 2 referrals: 14000
• Page views you earned from level 2 referrals: 1400
• Total page views you earned: 10500

Are you starting to see the power of this? With little effort, you are now getting an additional 3500 page views earned (a 50% increase in traffic!). It is really starting to explode, as we will see in the third weeks example.

• Pages views you earned: 7000
• Active referrals (level 1): 6
• Page views earned by level 1 referrals: 35000
• Page views you earned from level 1 referrals: 3500
• Active referrals (level 2): 12
• Page views earned by level 2 referrals: 56000
• Page views you earned from level 2 referrals: 5600
• Active referrals (level 3): 8
• Page views earned by level 3 referrals: 28000
• Page views you earned from level 3 referrals: 2800
• Total page views you earned: 19900

Amazing! After just three weeks, if you stopped surfing altogether you would still be getting almost twice the traffic you had started out with! And you just brushed the surface, because there are still further levels to start filling.

Can you see now why using traffic exchanges should not be a one man show? Why you should spend some time upfront recruiting members below you to help generate your traffic? I thought so :)

The example I used above, and the assumptions, are pretty generic, but can be affected by many things. The two most important factors you can influence is how dedicated you are to recruiting referrals into your TE, and how dedicated you are in training your downline to replicate whatever you are doing. Communicate with your downline as often as possible, offering encouragement and training to help them succeed.

After all, your downline's success is what will ensure you will become successful yourself.