"Traffic trading is both easy and intricate. There are different types of traffic trades. There are miscellaneous ways to go about obtaining trades."

Traffic for an adult webmaster is both a bonus and a curse. So many gallery builders and top lists decipher their value by traffic amounts. They all are after as many visitors as they possibly can acquire. They know like all marketers know that the more people you relay your message to, the more sales you will reap. Of course, that's the theory. I won't go into the quality of adult traffic in this article. What I will point out is if your traffic brings you a bandwidth bill that exceeds your sales profits, you might understand why I stated that traffic for the adult webmaster is both a bonus AND a curse.

Traffic is a really cool band that Eric Clapton used to be in. Traffic also once referred to the movement of automobiles on the highways and streets of our countries and cities. Since the Internet blasted into popular culture, traffic has come to have the new meaning of the flow of surfers to and from websites.

There's unique traffic, exit traffic, TGP traffic and the ever-elusive quality traffic. Traffic can be bought, sold, stolen, scripted and traded. In fact, trading traffic is probably a webmaster's biggest source of hits to their site aside from paid-for traffic.

Traffic trading is both easy and intricate. There are different types of traffic trades. There are miscellaneous ways to go about obtaining trades. There are special message boards for traffic trading discussions and dealing. Companies and websites and programmers have all contributed pages, knowledge and time to helping adult webmasters increase their traffic.

One can buy a script for a Circle Jerk (CJ) site or try the more recently popular CJ2, but I wouldn't recommend CJ for the adult webmaster new to traffic trading. Circle jerking is intensive and requires you have your own hosting and domain with specified directories and capabilities. If you are somewhat new to traffic trading, then you would probably do best starting off small with personal trades.

How do you get other webmasters of other site to trade links with you? The first way is to go where webmasters hang out to discuss and trade traffic. Traffic trader's message boards are numerous in the adult online business. You can go there and read the topics and get a feel of what the protocol is for a traffic trade.

A most important factor to consider when dealing with trades is how much traffic you can realistically send to your trading webmaster. If you have little or no traffic to give, be honest about it and don't expect to receive heaping gobs of hits. More than likely, whoever you deal/trade with will send you more hits than you can reciprocate. You can also get personal trades from the webmasters you become acquainted with in message boards.

In fact, these are sometimes easier on you because your friends know your status traffic-wise and will tolerate your lesser returns. Keep in mind though that asking for trades in a general forum discussion is considered spam. If you want to discuss traffic trading in a public forum, try these appropriate places:

AWI Traffic Traders Board
(http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ultimatebb.cgi?category=4)
A very busy place with specialized discussions of TGP, CJ, CJ2, toplist and other types of traffic/site trading.

PornCity's Traffic Traders Board
(http://bbs.porncity.net/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=11)
Seriously beneficial webmaster trading of traffic goes on at this much respected board.

Netpond Traffic Trader's Board
(http://www.netpond.com/trafficboard)
Probably the original webmaster resource site, Netpond offers this scrolling message board full of webmasters and sites just waiting to trade traffic with you.

When you begin to trade traffic from people you've never looked in the eye, it shouldn't be necessary to caution you to be careful. Nevertheless, pay attention to the details and get the plans straight before you accept a trade. Know what's expected of you like if your trader expects you to send some traffic his way and how you're going to deliver it. Will you send your traffic through 404 pages or through blind gallery links? If you are just starting out, then you'll want to deal with smaller sites similar to yours.

As you get bigger, you'll probably add more trades to your list. Will you then begin to promise so much space on your site, there's little room for actual content on your page? What type of site do you want? Do you want a content rich site with selective but effective link trades or do you want to go full out and build a content lite top list or CJ2 site? How will you check to see if your traffic is increasing from your trades? How will you manage all the links within your list?

A large portion of link trading is done with the help of software. If you have more than ten sites you trade traffic with, then that website counter button probably won't do you much good for tracking the statistics of your trades. Some great programs that can help you manage link/traffic trading are:

Link - Spy
(http://www.link-spy.com)
A freeware goodie that checks all the sites on your list to make sure they are still linking to you.

IntelliLink Free
(http://www.smartcgis.com/intellilink/free.shtml)
More than just a link-checker this is a serious cgi script generator that will manage a larger more list-oriented site. This free version has limited features but it evens manages the hits you send out to your trades.

X3 Traffic Trader
(http://x3scripts.com/x3trader.html)
X3 makes good and popular adult webmasters script generators. This one is a cgi beauty that collects data on traded traffic, sends out hits to co-traders and even builds templates for your link list.

A traffic trade can be as uncomplicated as putting a link on your page that goes to the page of a friend with your link on his. A traffic trade can be as complicated as sending out tens of thousands of hits to numerous traders. Traffic trading can be troublesome if for instance, you give traffic to someone who deliberately doesn't send it back. Traffic trading can be costly if you get thousands of hits in a week and you have to eat bandwidth because your sales profits weren't profitable.

Take on no more than you can handle. Give no more than you can afford.