There is a common misconception that all you have to do to "make it big on the web" is throw up a website and then sit back and watch the sales roll in. This "build it and they will come" mentality is as effective online as it is offline - i.e. not at all.

Although the internet has, to a certain degree, levelled the playing in terms of allowing small businesses to compete with larger ones on a more equal footing it is not a miracle cure.

In order to succeed on the web you need three basic items:

1) Good product
2) Good price
3) Customers

The Internet has certainly made obtaining items 1 and 2 easier - you can now become an "affiliate" for world beating products and profit from what others have developed or you can market your own products.

However good your product is and how keen your price you still need that third, vital, element - the customer. For larger companies with large marketing budgets they can create online and offline campaigns that drive customers to their website. But what about the little guy - the guy who has not got the resources for a TV advert or banner advertising campaigns on Ebay !. I am talking about the guy like you and me - a shoestring budget and no idea where to start. Of course there are the usual routes of banner advertising, FFA, safelists etc but who has ever got real, sustainable traffic from any of these sources.

So what is the alternative? - Well surprisingly simple actually - traffic exchanges. What are traffic exchanges? - Websites that you can join and view or "surf" other members websites and in return they will view your website - your free visitors!. To see how a traffic exchange works ( and start getting visitors to your site ) I suggest you visit http://www.321hits.com and check it out.

One of the down sides of traffic exchanges is that if they only have a small membership base then it will be the same people who are visiting your site over and over again. This is less than ideal because you want your product exposed to potential new customers rather than the same person all the time.

A major advantage of an exchange like http://www.321hits.com is that not only does it have many thousands of members but it also employs "vs-ten" technology from varisearch. To cut a long story short this means that members from other traffic exchanges visit sites listed on 321hits. In effect this means the potential user base of this exchange goes up from thousands to tens if not hundreds of thousands of users - more potential customers for your product.

In summary - it is difficult for small, emerging websites to bring visitors in but traffic exchanges can offer a quick, easy and free way to get the hits flowing. They are not perfect and need to be used in conjunction with other marketing tools but you should be checking them out now - your competitors might be already !