The History of the Exchanges

Traffic exchanges, start page exchanges, hit exchanges, click through programs...Whatever you may call them, they have been one of the most used forms of traffic generation online. Here's my 'unofficial' take on how things got started...

In the late 90's, it's the 'golden age' of the internet. The dot com boom is in full swing and everything online is looking great. A few online websites started popping up called Paid To Surf's. Essentially these programs paid you to view little browser windows that you would download onto your computer. Advertisers paid these companies for 'impressions' which the company turned around into payment for their members. You could earn as much as a dollar an hour using these little downloadable programs, not a lot of money, but multiply this by the number of people you referred to the paid to surf, and presto, you had yourself a nice little profit from just viewing advertisements.

More and more paid to surf programs started to come online and more and more people were promoting them to try to earn referrals. Remember, the more referrals you earned, the more money you could make. These webmasters needed more places to promote their new paid to surf programs, and they needed it quick.

The concept of traffic exchanges was in fact taken from the banner exchange. The idea is simple, you view my banner (or website) and I'll view yours. Co-operative advertising through a traffic exchange, in it's purest form, first got it's start with a program called ClickThru.com. This was the first ever traffic exchange, where webmasters would view each others sites, with the ultimate goal to make a sale or earn a referral. The industry exploded and each day there seemed to be a new traffic exchange being launched.

In fact, this same trend has not changed much, as new programs are introduced everyday, but the major difference is the power these programs have to get your website seen. There has never been a more effective and easy way to drive traffic to your website, these reasons are why traffic exchanges are so popular. Most of these programs are free to join so not only are you getting a large amount of traffic, you are getting the hits for free. However, using traffic exchanges takes up a good chunk of time, and many webmasters simply do not have the time to 'click up credits'. Traffic exchange owners began to offer 'hits for sale' where busy webmasters could simply buy their hits instead of surfing for them.

This became a problem for the industry, because more and more would-be hit exchange owners, tried to cash in on this new way of thinking. By opening up traffic exchange after traffic exchange, the market began to be flooded with fly by night start up's. Quality would prove king as many of these programs have since gone offline, but the effective and most used programs remain today and continue to provide excellent results for their members.

HitExchange101.com was first introduced as an online training center for new traffic exchange owners. For almost a year, the old '101' system educated and launched many successful exchanges but now the website is focusing on educating the public on the power of these programs. Traffic Exchanges continue to grow each and everyday as hundreds of new surfers come on board, please use Hit Exchange 101 as your guide through this very exciting and new online promotion industry. Welcome to the Traffic Exchange industry!

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