"How do I get more traffic to your site?" That's the eternal question. Or to be more precise, "How do I get more targetted traffic to my pages, people who are going to be interested in what I have to offer?"

Afterall, there's no point, or rather little point in getting a steady stream of boxing fans over to your site, if its main theme is bread making. I said little point because I'm pretty sure that there are some boxing enthusiasts who are also avid bread makers, but what would be likelihood of getting that many over to your bread making site at any given time?

One method of getting targetted traffic to your site is through the hit exchanges. Now despite what you may have heard about them, I urge you to give me a chance to explain, why, if hit exchanges are used in a certain way, they can be a great souce of targetted visitors. Warm responsive prospects who want to know more about your site and/or business.

Put simply, a hit exchange is a facility that you can use to get hits to your site in exchange for viewing other people's sites. Not all exchanges are created equal and two of the main things to look out for when picking which ones to join are:

A) anti cheat controls: the top hit exchanges have tight anti cheat security which prevents the use of auto surf software. Whilst the use of such programs is very tempting and attractive, it kind of defeats the point of the hit exchanges. There'll be more on this later on!

B) the exchange ratio: just how many sites will you need to view in order to get one visitor to your site? The smaller the amount of pages you have to visit in order to get a hit back to your own site, the more productive your surfing time will be. The traffic that comes from hit exchanges has been called a number of things, none of which are particularly savoury - cheese burger traffic (well, I guess that's pretty savoury in one sense of the word!), a waste of bandwith, a cheap gimmick.

Well, inspired by another internet marketer's experience with them, I decided to advertise an ebay auction on one of the top hit exchanges and ended up getting a much higher winning bid than I would have done otherwise.

The thing with hit exchanges is that you've got to know how to use them, otherwise your results will be disappointing. But if you apply the three tips that I personally use when advertising on them, you may be pleasantly surprised.

So let's go straight to....

No1: Create a special page for the traffic exchanges.

The maximum amount of time that your site will be given to load is 30 seconds and the last thing you want is a slow loading page. It needs to: a) load quickly which will mean being very sparing with the graphics and animation. b) put across the greatest benefit for visiting you site very clearly. c) have a quick and easy way for surfers to bookmark your page. This is very important. When surfing for hits, you get into a kind of flow, one you don't really want to interrupt. Having a favourites button will ensure that people who are pushed for time can always come back and view your page later. If you have links to other sites on your special page,it's best if they open in new windows. That way your visitor doesn't have to leave the hit exchange. It's also a good idea to have some form of email capture facility on your page. Offer surfers something free in exchange for their email address or use a subscription box to get sign ups for your newsletter. No2: Choose hit exchanges that allow you to select which category your site falls into. This way, it will be viewed by surfers who've also chosen this category or similar categories. So your search optimization site won't get shown to surfers interested in action/adventure games! Some exchanges also let you pick the type of sites you want to see. No3: Use hit exchanges that don't allow cheating

Remember I touched on this earlier? It's so important that I thought I'd talk a bit more about it here. Put bluntly, hit exchanges that allow cheating aren't worth too much of your time. Why? Because whilst you're faithfully clicking away, and viewing other people's sites, yours never gets seen because X amount of surfers in that exchange aren't really surfing at all. In fact they're using some form of surf automation software that's busy doing the "clicking" for them! As I mentioned earlier, this really does defeat the point of traffic exchanges which is to give some of your time to view other people's sites to receive the time of fellow hit exchange members. Anti cheating controls can take the form of having to click on a certain number or shape before you can proceed on to the next page and earn a hit to your site.

Other types include acknowledging receipt of bonus credits and some even offer cash prizes that you need to claim!

You may have heard a lot of bad things about hit exchanges but don't be put off by them.

As with most forms of advertising, starting off with free offers and then marketing your main product(s) and service(s) will always work better than trying to sell something straight away.

This is especially true of hit exchanges were people's main focus is surfing for credits.

Apply the three tips above for better results, and whilst surfing, take an interest in other people's pages. Learn from their mistakes and try and emulate their sucesses. And you never know, whilst looking through other people's sites, you might very well come across that elusive product, service or bit of information that you've been searching for.

About the author: Ofa Morgan is the owner of Blue Moon Offers, a site where you can submit your articles, get free content and win a great prize for your "rant 'n' rave". Find out how at: http://www.bluemoonoffers.com. She's also a hit exchange enthusiast and for more details on one of the top traffic exchanges, visit: http://www.bluemoonoffers.com/wmq.html