HIT EXCHANGE

This company has gone through many changes and now is run by a group of the members on a voluntary basis. From the last communication we don't think that they have a very high membership which is sad because they are a pretty good system and have some of the best stats and options around.

They have a very unique system of determining your exchange rate. It depends on a lot of things and can end up being very complicated. To summarize.

• You MUST place a banner or a hit exchange member button on your home page.
  
  
• You MUST display banners in certain places. The more desirable placement the more likely your credit will be good.
  
  
• You cannot have more than two banners on a page. (this is a good rule anywhere)

Now it gets more complicated.
Your rate depends on how many times someone clicks on a banner on your site. The more clicks you get the higher your rate will be. How many clicks you get is far more important than how many banners you show.

This means you can have a very high traffic site and show lots of banners, but if someone does not click on one of them you don't get your banners shown anywhere else. Even if you have banners placed correctly at the top of the pages as their rules demand you may still show a lot of banners and get poor showings in return. It's also possible to have a small site, show few banners but get higher clicks so you end up getting a lot more showing of your banners than you show. It all depends on placement and click thrus. You can do very well with this company or very poorly. The problem is getting the ratio. Even if you obey all their rules it's not always easy push it higher. You can also get extra credits for voting for other members sites as hot sites.

Advantages

• Can get really good ratios but to 5-4 or better
  
  
• Seem to get higher click thru rates than other exchanges (60:1 average)
  
  
• Allow up to 8 Banners per Account. Great for comparing banner effectiveness.
  
  
• Really good category listing, it's easy to find somewhere you fit into
  
  
• Several different banner sizes
  
  
• Targeting capability, allows you to show your banners only in areas where they will be most relevant.
  
  
• Able to block certain categories so can keep competition off your website.
  
  
• Good referral program where you get hit credits and a small portion of the traffic from your referral site. However finding the referral information to use is not easy.
  
  
• Can get referrals if someone clicks on the small add on to the bottom of the banner. Don't have to promote the site to get additions.
  
  
• Quite good statistic reporting much better than many other sites. Easy to use and understand.
  
  
• A wealth of information. They don't leave you guessing, you can find answers to everything you need about the exchange, you don't have to figure it out yourself. This is very helpful especially to a beginner.

Disadvantages

• Rules of placement can be very restrictive to some websites.
  
  
• If you don't get the click thrus it's can be hard to get a good ratio
  
  
• It's often better on small sites than large ones
  
  
• It's often not at all easy to figure out why your ratio is poor. you could abide by all the rules and still not get a good ratio.
  
  
• It appears that they don't check sites more than once, if you move your banners to a more acceptable position to improve your rate often it does not good.
  
  
• Does have a small add on to the banner, even though you can get referrals this way, it's won't happen often if at all.

CONCLUSION

The site itself is very good. It's easy to follow and understand. We would strongly recommend any beginners at least explore the site for a good understanding of banner network working. Don't get bogged down in their exchange ratio rules, they can be confusing even for someone who has been around the internet for a long time.

RECOMMENDATION.

We used to strongly recommend this program because they used to send out email alerts if they could not find your banner which was an excellent check to ensure your site is up and working well. Sadly with the new people in charge this service is no longer offered so the desirability of the site has gone down.

However we have been using this exchange on our own sites and for many of our clients for many years now. If you have a low traffic site sign up, follow the rules and you should get good results./P>

If you have a site that has high traffic, or one page on it that gets a great number of user hits DON'T PUT ONE OF THEIR BANNERS THERE. What happens is you show a lot of banners, however the click thru rate is likely to be low so your ratio goes way down. You can find yourself showing thousands of banners but only getting a few hundred in return because the click thru ratio to the number shown is low. This is especially true if the banner is not situated right at the top of the page. To improve your ratio put their banners on lesser used pages (making sure you add a HIT button on your main page to obey the rules). This way the number of banners you show is lower, but the ratio ends up being higher so you get a better rate of return. Yes we know it sounds crazy but this is the way it works out. If you don't believe us try it yourself.