I recently read an article titled "Crossing the Line" that really got my attention. Here is what I read "Affiliate marketing is now an integral part of the web's composition." This article was written by Greg Shepard and published in Revenue a magazine dedicated to affiliate marketing.

I agree with Mr. Shepard's statement however it is what he said next that surprised me, this is what he wrote "It's also now widely heraleded as the web's most cost-effective marketing vehicle."

Say what! No way, I happen to know of a marketing medium that is much more cost effective, results oriented and can be utilized for no-cost. Now do I have your attention, I hope so because those of us who have been in the Traffic Exchange Marketing Business and those that came before us could teach Mr. Shepard a lesson or two about affiliate marketing.

I liked the concept that he spoke of next and continued to read despite his previous statement. Mr. Shepard went on to mention something that I have incorporated at one of the marketing websites that I own. Greg went on to say that many Marketing and Traffic Delivery Merchants were creating a hybrid traffic delivery model called CPP (cost-plus-performance) vs. the old model of delivering impressions or hits on a CPM or cost per million basis.

The CPP model delivers a paid campaign with a performance campaign to better increase affiliates return on investment. As I mentioned earlier one of the methods that I use is to offer guaranteed unique traffic plus the ability to send out an add to over 200,000 e-zine readers of various e-zines combined with the power of a Traffic Exchange Marketing service.

Mr. Shepard goes on to reiterate that the future of affiliate marketing combined with CPP will take back click-through inventory that was previously lost to Google's AdSense and other similar advertisers. "The result is a whole new world of opportunities for merchants, affiliate managers, and affiliates."

After reading that I decided to list the traffic that my marketing service delivers each day, week, and month. This is something that is not being done in my business however I suspect that it will soon be adopted by many of my savvy counterparts.

I did find two traffic exchanges that listed their amount of impressions delivered for that day and those were: StartXchange.com owned by Tim Linden and 10Khits4uNow.com owned by Rob Gehring, Vinterchange.com listed the total impressions delivered since the beginning of their inception and ProClickEstate.com lists thier traffic delivered by week.

As the title of this article mentions trends and the traffic titanic, I am not suggesting that the traffic exchange marketing business is sinking however there are a great many exchange business's out ther that have room for improvement on quality and deliverability.

The Traffic Exchange Marketing Business has come a long way since the day of the first traffic exchange, we have room for improvement and from the people that I know and the information that I am privvy to we are on the right track. One market that we can do better to capture is the market share of affiliate marketers. It will be interesting to see what the next five years brings to traffic delivery and online marketing!

Copywrite 2006 Mark "The Marketing Professional" Brown

Mark Brown is the owner of The Marketing Professional Newsletter and Exclusive Members Community as well as Pro Click Estate, one of the internets most effective marketing services. http://www.TheMarketingProfessional.com