An advertisement swap or ad swap is simply an arrangement where you agree to put up someone else’s ad on your site or email newsletter in exchange for them doing the same.

The link value doesn’t matter at all. What matters is getting visitors into your web site.

Everybody needs traffic. It’s the lifeblood for any online business. So, you need to make sure that you get lots of traffic for your online business. You can pay and get the traffic- that’s the easiest way to get traffic. That’s fine if you have thousands of dollars to pay for the ads, but what if you don’t have such a bid marketing budget and cannot pay for the advertisements? Now we want to present a simple way to get traffic absolutely free : ad swaps.

The goal of an ad swap is to get the necessary exposure in other sites and blogs for free and gather necessary traffic back to your blog or site. It improves your (blog, site, product, brand’s) exposure and improves the chance of doing better in business. It can also be another kind of link exchange which improves your search engine rank.
ad swap
Four Pre-Requisites for a Successful Ad Swap

1. Equal traffic and exposure. The two parties who want to be involved in the ad swap should have equal traffic and exposure or email list. Inequality will not create a strong relationship between the two parties and ad swap will not last long.

2. Fair and Good Ad placement. In ad swap both parties should place the ads in a fair and good manner. Ads should be placed in an area which receives equal visitors in both the sites. Ads displayed in a similar fashion can get you the necessary benefits. When you go for ad swap discuss the type of ad and its placement with your ad swapping partner.

3. High Relevancy. Relevancy is what you need in ad swapping. Ad swapping is best when it happens between two websites in the same niche. However it should not be a strict criteria and ad swapping can happen between websites in different but related niche. Ad swapping will yield maximum result when ads are placed in a site or page which is relevant to your website or blog.

4. No Conflicting Purpose. You should always avoid ad swapping with conflicting partners. You should not do ad swapping with a competitor unless it is a joint venture or joint promotion. You should also avoid sites or brands that contradict your brand or site. Would you like to see PETA doing an ad swap with Kentucky Fried Chicken?

Ad swapping requests are more likely to see success with people with whom you already have a relationship. If you request an unknown blogger or site master, then your request is more likely to be turned down. You site or blog should have authority and necessary exposure in the Internet space to you to be able to find an ad swapping partner. You should be able to show the potential benefit to your ad swapping partner.

Seek Quality Ad Partners, Don’t Settle For Anything Less

You need to be careful in selecting the ad swapping partner. Otherwise it will be an old school traffic exchange system. In this system webmasters agreed to visit each others site and click through the pages and links to increase page views. Such arrangements existed previously and it still exists. But it does not help you in true sense and does not improve visitors to your site who are really interested. So, you need to be careful not so let ad swap become such a traffic exchange system.

You need to maximize the returns to your site or blog from the limited inventory that you have. Ad partners chosen with utmost care after looking through all the necessary specifications will give the maximum return. Don’t do ad swapping because another webmaster asked you for it.

There is one more important factor and that’s networking. Webmasters and bloggers are often inundated with requests for link trades: they have a defensive barrier against requests from strangers. Unless your site has some reputation or authority in your niche, ad swaps usually need to be prefaced with an established relationship.

People are far more likely to do ad swaps after they become more comfortable with you, when they don’t see you as a leech but a potential benefit. So keep this in mind as well when you aim to fulfill the four other prerequisites.

traffic-exchange
Image Credit: andy frankwick

You may be familiar with the traffic exchange networks of the past (and present), places where webmasters can go sign up, submit their site and browse through each other’s websites in order to earn viewing credits that can be converted into pageviews for their own site.

It’s all about trading incentivized glances in a merry-go-round of self-interest. You look at my site, I look at your site. Everyone is happy. And it goes on ad nauseam.

Even though these pageview-trading rings are called traffic exchanges, they aren’t useful because you don’t get truly targeted and interested viewers, people who click through to your site because they were honestly compelled by curiosity or desire, not because they want more hits to their own website.

I bring up the topic of the old-school traffic exchanges to emphasize the importance of having a quality ad swap. One should carefully select ad partners because you need to maximize your returns with a limited inventory: you only have that much ad space to trade.

Your goal is to get the best quality visitors from your ad. To achieve that, you must try to only trade with websites that have a quality audience. Don’t do ad swaps just because someone asked you to, it could end up being a waste of time and ad space.

You probably know how to find quality ad partners already, as you should be familiar with your niche. If not, find them by doing a Google search for your site’s keywords.

If you can’t set up a good ad exchange because your site doesn’t get enough traffic, try again after you’ve developed a greater audience. Or you can negotiate with more popular sites by reducing the display length for your ad against their ad, although even that may not work.

Types of Ad Swaps You Can Set Up

All ad swaps can be measured with tracking links and analytics so both parties can compare how many hits they received with the clicks they sent out. If you’re doing an ad swap with a friend or prefer a looser agreement, you can forgo click data and stats altogether. The choice is up to you. Here are some ad swap formats you can use.

* On-site Banners and Text Links. This includes banners of all sizes and text links on a site-wide basis or on specific webpages. Includes blog post promos.

* Email Newsletters. Involves inserting a mention of your ad partner’s website or product/offer. This can be accompanied by a personal endorsement or not.

* RSS Feed Ads. These are either text links or image banners placed within an RSS feed.

Some Extra Tips and Recommendations

One guideline I follow is to never send traffic to my homepage or any page that is unoptimized. A custom landing page must be created for each ad swap. I can design it for the purpose of capturing leads (freebie + opt-in) or set it up so that it becomes a welcome page (’Hello, visitors from Site A!’) with a short introduction and deep links.

I also pay special attention to the ad banners used. Banners that reference your partner’s site name or brand tend to get better click throughs, although you should get permission first. Sometimes they do not want to appear as if they were endorsing your site, although they are already implicitly doing so by having your ad up.
Ad Swaps Aren’t Hip Now But They Still Work

While it’s a common email marketing practice amongst internet marketers, I don’t often read about ad swaps being recommended as a traffic strategy for bloggers or webmasters. There were a few ad trading networks around but none of them really caught on for some reason.

Perhaps it sounds archaic and boring compared to all the super cool social media viral marketing buzz building tactics being promoted right now by all the experts. Yes, ad swaps may sound dull but they still work if you know how to do them right. If you’ve got ad space you can’t sell, why not give it a shot? You have nothing to lose at all. ^_^


Popularity: 3% [?]

Print This Post