Trading traffic or trading links is a really good way for newbies to make business connections and gain new traffic to their websites. Standard practice for this trading is to list your partner in a nice spot on your site, and they do the same. Usually, this is the extent of the work required, other than occasionally checking to make sure you are still listed on the pages of those you traded with.Something is happening that will begin to discourage this type of trading. There are a few webmasters that are trading links with others and then taking ideas from their partners and using them as their own, without giving proper credit. Even worse, once they have done this, they are removing the link back to their trade partners.

If you trade links with a website, and then you find that your partner has a great affiliate you would love to promote, be considerate and sign up under that webmaster. If you can’t find a link at their site to sign up under them, contact the webmaster. I’m sure they would be more than happy to give you the proper link where you can sign up, and they will recieve credit. You don’t have to do this, it’s just good business practice.

The cheating is coming in to play when someone trades links with a site and then begins to change their own website to look almost identical to their partner. Using the same layouts, creating new pages that look like exactly like your partners, and signing up for the same affiliates with the sole intention of copying someone else’s advertising ideas are some ways that the cheaters are manipulating the trust given when trading links. Once they have taken all the ideas they wanted from their partner, the link to the site they copied is then removed from their pages, while the link to their site still remains on the victim’s webpage.

Trading links and traffic is meant to be a way for everyone to help each other gain a little more exposure in the vast world that is the internet. It was never intended as a way for webmasters to take someone else’s ideas and exploit them. If this keeps happening it will start to discourge link trading, and that will hurt us all in the long run.

Being unique is one of the few ways to keep surfers interested. They don’t want to look at the same stuff again and again on every website. This will drive them to keep looking until they find a site different from the rest. Besides, how do you know that the site you took ideas from is doing great? They may get less traffic than you do, and looking just like them may hurt your traffic in the long run. If you spent as much time coming up with your own ideas and designs as you did trying to take someone else’s, you might just surprise yourself. Something terrific might just come out of your own mind that drives you to the front of the pack.

We don’t need to cheat each other. The only outcome for this type of behavior will be a negative one, and this will shut doors for newbies everywhere that sometimes rely on the trades as one of the only ways to get their name out in the world.