Personally I think traffic exchanges will only work for very general sites, such as adult sites/humour sites where most of the time the actual site is not an issue but the content.

Banner exchanges are OK but you run the risk of having a load of naff banners plastered all over your site.

Im constantly looking at ways to promote this site (well both the forum and site) and have tried many things over the years. Next up is a professionally written article (due last week!) for the main site coupled with a press release.

I've found the hardest thing is not so much getting visitors to your site but getting them to stay and come back! So the challenge for this year is to make my site more "sticky"