THE TRUTH ABOUT RECIPROCAL LINKS You Are Being Misled About Reciprocal Links! Exchanging links has been an important part of generating traffic since the concept of Internet marketing was first established, but at least 90% of people looking to trade links don't understand the real benefits and, therefore, fail to make the most of them. The vast majority of web site owners think that exchanging links is only helpful because it can boost their rankings in search engines such as Google.com. They are however, useful for this purpose since the number of links back to a site is figured into ranking calculations. But according to WebSideStory's StatMarket Web site optimization service, search engines account for only little more than 13% of an average web site's traffic. Full story - http://www.aboundinglinks.com/truth.html
gah, the old exchanging links debate - exchanging links is virtually useless - unless a site with a much higher pr than yours trades links, link exchanges are seen as both websites scratching each others backs in an attempt to manipulate SERPS and have very little significance in search engines. I would concentrate on other ways of getting one way links as they are much more prestigious.
Exchanging links does give traffic benefits and exposure; it's not a bad thing at all. Everyone is so focused on PageRank its ridiculous...that's not the point of marketing.
Sure. Note that for any 1 search, 1000000 results, about 7 websites get the traffic. Everyone else is part of the "average" with 0 traffic. So yes, recip links make up the majority of the 15 visitors each day. But only if the linking partners all have clear link pages.