Does the View Exchange System Work?

*Originally published on 12/11/09



If you read Web site forums, you'll see offers for a "view exchange system." Basically they're saying that if you read their articles, they'll read yours. It's a nice quid pro quo agreement that is mutually beneficial. We all want to get a lot of page views, for one thing it means money, but it also means that people are reading our articles, which is the whole point in the first place.

Some have come out and said that that is a poor man's game. It seems nice in theory, but once put into practice it doesn't come out to be worth the effort. They'll throw all kinds of equations and SCIENCE! at you to prove their point.

It's a solid argument, but for me, a page view is a page view, I don't care who puts it on the board. I'm also all for writers supporting each other. We aren't exactly known for our gargantuan incomes so whatever helps other people put a little bit of extra money in their pocket is nice.

I think that whether or not the view exchange system works depends on how much you get for each set of page views. With Associated Content, it would never work. I'm sorry to say it, but for the amount you get for every thousand views, it's just not feasible. The view pay system on this site peaks at about 2 bucks for every thousand. In order to get that you'd need a million views even before that so it's not very feasible.

I've noted before how I also write for Examiner.com. While they pay based solely on page views, they pay significantly more for said views. While it varies, you'll tend to get an average of 10 bucks for every thousand. With this, I think it may be possible. I've seen some complain on this site's forum that the only views they get are other examiners and those are the only subscribers and that this doesn't work. I say, there are a ton of examiners out there and if we all help each other out, we all win.

Even if the only subscribers you get are other examiners, that's a page view and there are other ways they can impact your pay rate, staying on the page longer, subscribing, and leaving comments also gives your pay rate a boost. As such, it gives the readers extra ways to boost other writers income.

While you would need thousands of subscribers in order to get enough money coming in to sustain yourself on that site alone, there are tons of Examiners out there. It's a national site. With more subscribers, regular readers, and commenters, that leaves less articles for you to write every day. This, in turn, gives you more time to spend reading other people's work.

Will your inbox fill up quickly? Oh, I'm sure of it. I try to subscribe to other examiners pages to do my part to help out and I'll find several emails in my inbox after only a couple of hours, but I manage to keep up. As it is, many examiners submit several articles a day in order to stay fresh on the page. With enough readers, you could write only a couple of articles a day and still pull in enough to make it worthwhile.

You could make the argument that there is no way you would be able to read all of those emails. In one sitting, probably not, but again, if enough writers do it, you can get away with writing a bit less and devoting more time to reading. It's not like the emails are going to go anywhere, they're in your inbox. Even space isn't an issue, not anymore. My hotmail account gives me more storage space as I need it (and I already have plenty) so that's not an issue, I've got all the time in the world. With the multiple windows feature on most internet servers, I can go through them even quicker. As long as the page view rate is high enough, this is doable.

The major factor is how much the site you're writing for pays you for a given set of views. It would take a lot of constant readers, but readers are readers and as long as people are reading I don't care if they are just fellow site writers or not.