This is often a hotly debated question and I'm sure anyone who has been promoting online over a decade will agree they are not what they used to be, or are they?

I must admit, I have been on both sides and often in the middle of this question, but most often it's a matter of perspective from your advantage point. Those that expect to throw up any old opportunity page and have people flock to join it are only dreaming, but from my perspective of having that actually happen in the past does cloud my judgement.

I can clearly remember promoting a brand new concept for building a list called FREEnetLeads where I created a pseudo press release about it to run in traffic exchanges and signed up over 100 new members overnight. Then I went on to use traffic exchanges almost exclusively and built that downline to over 10,000 in a year. I doubt if you could get the same results today without using social networking or a previously built list.

However, traffic exchanges can still play an important role in branding yourself so when people do see your opportunity somewhere, they get the feeling that only recognition or familiarity can supply and that can increase your odds of making a connection.

Some people think that branding is nothing more than pasting up the same old opportunity pages, but including your name with an image to brand it to yourself. Unless it increases your value in the eyes of the visitor, it will miss the boat as most of these do.

In thinking this over, I came up with an experiment that is teaching me what works. I picked a new traffic exchange that offered a chance to brand myself as a leader and build a team brand as well as an individual one. By using most of my traffic exchange credits to further the team instead of wasting them on opportunity pages, I think it will eventually have enough of an impact on my individual brand to make a difference.

That's hard to explain in an article like this, so I created a video that I think does a much better job at http://USClickAds.com/traffic

I would be interested in any feedback you can provide, good or bad.

See you online!