How many of us have gotten side tracked surfing at traffic exchanges with collecting things?
There are badges, stickers, zubees, viral traffic games and more. I have also noticed with the new exchanges that you get so focused on collecting that you are not paying attention to the sites.
Badges, I have found no use for. And I refuse to pay to buy specific cards to have a chance at winning some cash. The website owners are paying for the badges you collect as well. So, I don't see the purpose of badges.
Stickers, earn you tokens which can be traded in for advertising at specific sites. If you are real good at collecting they have actual goods you can trade for.
Zubees, can be traded for cash and increases in points when surfing for x number of days. Originally, when I joined you needed 600,000 + zubees to trade for $5 cash. Since, then now that I was close to reaching that amount, the number increased to over 900,000 zubees.
Viral Traffic Games is nice in that when you play you earn credits, texts, banners and even cash when you move your player. The draw back is as I found out this week....you can surf your fingers to the bone just to play the game and at the end of the week have nothing to show for it.
At one time of day, traffic exchanges were simply tit for tat. Meaning surfers surfed to gain exposure to their sites. There were no distractions so to speak of except an occasional page that said you have won. (credits/impressions sometimes cents)
There used to be a daily limit to how much someone could surf at any given exchange. It seems now, with sites offering x amt of cents per 100 or 200 views, that surfers are furiously clicking away to earn cents.
So, what does this mean? To me it is a way to get page views, however the return has been nil and I do believe it is due to everyone clicking as fast as they can and watching for those icons instead of viewing the sites. I need to find more old school programs that do not have all the bells and whistles.
My best site is EasyHits4U. They have so many members that it is hard to keep credits going, however I would rather have that than ending up with thousands of credits that I can't use. Also, they pay 30 cents per 1000 page views and it does not have to be done in one setting. Payout is $3. They have been around since 2003 and I do end up with some click thrus on my splash pages vs the newer sites where everyone is clicking for cash and games.
Having ad tracked numerous links at numerous sites, my click thru ratio is 0%. I suppose the views eventually help your Alexa ratings but from what I can tell, it is not worth spending hours clicking.
My next goal is to find out if some of these new safelists provide the click thru rate they claim and if those rates end up in sales.