Smiley Traffic
Smiley Traffic is one of the traffic exchanges that I personally use due to the surf ratio and rewards. For every 100 pages that you "surf" they will give you $0.02 and approximately 10 bonus credits. Considering that each page is shown for 10 seconds, this is a nice incentive to surf. As you are surfing you may notice that there are banners and text links shown alongside each website. You can convert your credits into banner/text link impressions if you would prefer to advertise that way.
Another big advantage of this site is that there is a "paid to click" section where there are adverts to click offering more credits per visit (typically 5 credits for 30 seconds). Some of these also offer cash per visit which can be converted into credits or cashed out via paypal.
Auto Surfing
You may notice on traffic exchange sites that there is the option to autosurf. This doesn't require any manual input from the user so the computer can be left alone to gather credits. All credits earned in autosurf can only be used to show your website on autosurf. Therefore the traffic generated is much less useful than that gathered via the manual surf.
The one time that autosurfing can be useful is if you're not going to be at the computer for an hour or so. There is absolutely no harm done by showing your page in this way so you might as well leave it running. In general however, if you have some time to spare, I would recommend that you spend your time on the manual surf.
Splash Pages
Some traffic exchanges will allow you to create a splash page for your link. This means that instead of showing your referral link, a brief page (linked to your site) will be shown instead. This page can be a lot more persuasive than the standard referral link and will give you a chance to sell your site to the viewer. Another advantage of having a splash page is that they are designed to load very fast. You don't want some of your 10 second slot to be spent loading the complex web page.
If you are serious about Traffic exchanges then I would definitely recommend creating a splash page.
Finally, don't forget to keep your eye out for any new traffic exchanges with better rates or special features. There are always new sites being developed which offer slightly more to free members.
