Are the free traffic exchanges worth the effort?

When I first started in internet marketing I discovered free traffic exchanges. I thought wow! FREE advertising, I'll do really great. I then spent every spare moment adding credits to my traffic exchanges in the belief that that I would get loads of web traffic and leads delivered to my site. Whilst I got loads of hits to my website I got no actual prospects or valid leads. After a few weeks of trying I gave up this line of advertising.

Since then I have learnt a lot. What you really need to succeed are people who are actually interested in your own site or opportunity. These are the real leads that you need on your site.

Now forward wind to the present, as an experiment I retried some more traffic exchanges to see if my theory was correct....free traffic exchanges are full of like minded people trying to find leads for their own programs. Apart from a very small minority of new customers everyone surfing these sites are doing what I used to do, building credits for their own advertising.

So, what I do different these days is pay for fresh targeted advertising to attract people that are interested in what I am doing. That way I get a great conversion rate which has proved to be really cost effective.

If you disagree with my viewpoint then try some traffic exchanges for yourself. It certainly is a numbers game and you will (eventually) pick up new prospects but it can be a long process requiring a lot of patience.

I will write more on this in a few weeks after trying some other options. I'll be interested in other peoples viewpoint. Perhaps I just used the wrong exchanges.