I haven't been around all that long, but I don't know of any link lists that trade traffic, since basically traffic trading = blind links. We preach and decline submissions with blind links, and it would be pretty hypocrytical to skim clicks on a link list. In this way, link lists are kinda the "anti-TGP" IMO. Every time a surfer clicks a link on Fetish Philes they get what they were expecting. Period.
A link list will get some traffic (though not much) from recip links, a little more from building hard link trades (especially category page trades), but most of us (from what I've seen) really focus on getting search engine traffic. This takes longer to build and goes hand-in-hand with building link trades, but in the end it doesn't cost you anything and doesn't piss off your surfers. My site is thriving on return visitors, so the biggest thing is to get them there in the first place.
I'm currently throwing a bunch of bought traffic at Fetish Philes to get my name out there and build bookmarking surfers (which the traffic I'm buying is particularly good at...note, I've got a great traffic source at an ultra-cheap price, and it's genuine traffic), and 3 months in it's starting to pay off. Even recip traffic will pay off in the long run, as just about every site I list sends me at least 5 or 6 hits a month (some as many as 150/month). This may not sound like much, but once I've got a few thousand links in the database it will amount to 60k or so visitors monthly, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Just the opinions of a sorta-newbie link list owner.
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