Many people will tell you that traffic exchanges are effective. For some this is true depending on the serive or product that they offer. I however, have joined several traffic exchanges, some I have listed on this blog, and have found them on the whole to be very effective way of increasing good quality visitors to my site.
To get the best out of joining traffic exchanges you first need to make sure that your home page is effective at getting your message across, so that people who are reading it will go on to exploreb the rest of your site instead of just cloicking to the next site. You only have a few seconds to grab their attention, so make it clear and to the point of what you offer.
Out of the different types of exchanges, Manual traffic exchanges tend to better at obtaining quality site views because the viewer is having to wait for the timer, but Auto Fraffic Exchanges can play an important role if your goal is to increase your statistics, or if you have adverising on your site and your CTR is too high.
You also have to dedicate time, allow a certain amount of time preferably each day, to do some surfing and earn some credits, if you are a member of different sites, make a list and surf different sites on different days, so to increase your exposure to as many different people as possible.
