There are millions of traffic exchange sites online. If you can think of a niche or subject there is probably a traffic exchange named after it. The basic idea here is that you click on a website and go through it in 10 to 20 seconds and for every site you view you get credited. If the Traffic Exchange site has a 2:1 ratio then every 2 sites you view other member gets to view one of your sites.
Most of the traffic exchange sites have come up with an up-sell from the free traffic exchange. If you decide to become a paid member instead of a free one, you get additional benefits and the conversing rate is better. This is also good for search engine rankings, but most of the people who are viewing your site are just trying to get their credits and not actually paying attention to your site.
On the other hand, more people see your site more often they are sooner or latter going to click on it. This is because the more often they see it, they start to think about it in more depth.
When you are first trying out traffic exchange sites you need to spend a lot of time surfing to get credits and build your downline, so you can start promoting your own sites.
I use Firefox for my traffic exchange sites, I open all my sites in the tabs and surf on all of them at once. At first I was spending from 30 minutes up to 1 hour for surfing, but now I only surf for one hour once a week and I also make money when one of my downlines decides to upgrade to a paid member.
So, yes the hard work eventually pays off. You get credits assigned to you from your downline and commissions from paid members and you get traffic to your site or blog on a daily basis.
I'm a member of 20 traffic exchange sites, but I started with only 4. In time I started to build up and join other traffic exchange sites for free. I have to admit after this time I haven't paid for traffic in any way.
The bottom line is, the effort you put in is paid off at the end!
Traffic Exchanges - is all the hard work paid at the end?