Link Exchanges
Link exchanges are different from other forms of marketing you've done up
to this point. Whether you're just getting into your first online business, of if you've been doing this for some
time, if you haven't gotten into link exchanges, you might be missing out on a great marketing enhancement. These
exchanges are something of a cross between traffic exchanges and affiliate marketing programs. However, the way you
get into them and how they work are a bit different.
To begin with, a link exchange offers you the opportunity to share your links with other sites,
and in trade you place their links on your site. There are some new opportunities arising that allow you to do this
through an exchange site, but most of the time you will have to contact target sites directly and request to the
site's webmaster that an exchange be entered into between your site and theirs. With the sites I mentioned, you can
avoid most of this e-mail hassle and simply register your site as one willing to enter into a link exchange.
The benefit to being a member of a link exchange is that you are sharing traffic with other
sites who are, by your selection, going to give you targeted traffic appropriate to the goals of your business.
Furthermore, the more exchange partners you accumulate, the better visibility you have for your site. And, as you
know already, more visibility means more traffic, and more traffic means higher earnings.
It is important that you are aware of a couple of things about link exchanges. The first is that
these will often require you to do a lot of start-up work, contacting webmasters and setting the whole thing up.
Beyond that, you have to be able to monitor the effectiveness of each link you place. You don't want to have a
bunch of links out there doing nothing for your business. So getting into link exchanges and maintaining them can
be a good thing, but you will have to decide whether the work is worth the reward.
One final note about link exchanges. There are some who have argued that these agreements
actually take traffic away from your site by encouraging visitors to click a link before they buy anything from
you. While this may be true in some cases, it is not the standard. Many webmasters have found success with link
exchanges and would not do without them. So, here again, it will be up to you to decide whether this system will be
a benefit to your business, and it will be up to you as well to decide whether it's working once you've gotten into
it.
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