First of all let’s describe what an autosurf program is and how it works. On this article we are referring mostly to paid autosurfing not to the free programs. When you join one of these companies you pay some money to receive traffic in your websites. You also receive as profits a percentage of the money that you invest on the program. Then you surf a set amount of websites each day.

Autosurfing has gained a bad name lately. The industry leader was 12dailypro.com and they got in trouble with their payment processor StormPay. They were unable to pay users for a while. StormPay considered that some fraudulent activities were going on and suddenly froze the accounts of all users.

That’s when autosurf programs hit the news nationwide and many people considered them to be disguised pyramid schemes. In the other hand, some traffic exchange programs seem to provide a legitimate service to the users and a good opportunity to make some extra income.

Bellow I will explain the difference between a paid autosurf program and a paid manual traffic exchange program. If you join an autosurf program you will have to pay an up-front fee which you choose and you will have to surf a set amount of websites usually every day.

Your profits will be a percentage of your investment as described above. For example the program rules may be as follows. You may invest any amount between $10 – $6,000. You will receive 5% daily and you need to surf 10 websites per day.

The website owner provides you with a link where you can click and autosurf the websites every day. When you click the link the website runs on your browser without any intervention on your part. You don’t have to do anything. Just watch the websites one after the other. There is a timer who moves the websites on your browser every 15 – 30 seconds. So, it takes you only a few minutes each day to complete your assignment.

Other people that join the program do the same thing. They watch your advertisement and get paid for it. Notice that you don’t need a website to invest in many of these programs but you do need to make and investment if you want to generate profits and you need to watch the set daily amount of websites.

This is a nice idea. The drawback is that users do not actually need to watch the websites while they are running on the browser. They can set the timer and walk away for a few minutes. That’s why many individuals believe that these programs are ineffective and scamy.

Paid traffic exchange programs are quiet different. They are similar to the autosurf programs described above, but the users need to click a button whenever the timer runs out of time to have a new website appear on their browsers. This ensures that a real visitor is viewing your site.

The industry is moving fast toward this kind of system which is good for website owners. Some program owners even go to extremes and have the users insert a code when the timer runs out of time.

In my opinion paid traffic exchange companies are providing a legitimate service to the users. You can receive a percentage of your investment every day as profits while getting more exposure for your websites. It is a win-win situation for everyone.

The idea is to not get this as a full time income. I use to think about it as some nice extra cash and the possibility to get more traffic to my websites. In fact the goal of these programs is to help advertisers increase the exposure for their websites.

Another industry which have similar goal but uses a different system is the paid to read e-mails and paid to click links industry. In this industry the program owners receive money from the advertisers and pay the users to read ads via e-mails or to click links and visit the advertisers websites.

Anyway, as long as real visitors are seeing my pages I am going to be happy with the program. Keep in mind that this advertising techniques may not be as effective as others but still they are a good way to diversify your marketing strategies.

Some people love traffic exchange programs while other people see them as a waste of time. Everyone is different. What works well for some marketers doesn’t work for others. I try to diversify my marketing strategies as much as possible because I don’t know what could work for me and what doesn’t until I try it.

If you don’t want to invest any money but you want to receive more traffic in your websites, you have the option to join free traffic exchange programs. Once you join these programs you don’t have to pay anything. You visit other members websites with the condition that they visit yours. The rate is usually 2 – 1 meaning that for every two websites that you visit and stay for 15 – 30 seconds you will receive one visitor to your website.

There are many companies that offer free traffic exchange programs. Remember that this is different from autosurfing. The websites still run automatically on your browser but members have to enter a special code or click a link when the timer runs out.

The drawback of this technique is that while you can receive substantial quantities of visitors to your website, the traffic that you will generate is “dirty”. This means that those visitors may not be interested in your offer.

This technique works better for websites which promote a general attention-catching product or service. That doesn’t mean that it may not work for you.