(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
If you had some site, or browsed the Web a lot, in the late 90s, you probably remember services called “link exchangers” (the best known of which was, indeed, called “LinkExchange”). Basically, you subscribed, then created a banner for your site, and they gave you some code to put in your front page so that it would show banners for other subscribers. Usually, for every 2 you showed, yours would be shown once on some other subscrieber’s site. It worked reasonably well, though for some reason you don’t see it any more these days.
But now, there’s a relatively new kind of service, similar to those, but more oriented for blogs; I’ll call it “blog exchangers”. The idea is that, instead of having banners in your site, you earn credits by browsing other subscribers’ sites - it usually opens a browser page or tab, with a navigation link at the top, and the real blog below. To make sure that you are, indeed, at least looking at the blogs, you have to stay at least 30 seconds in each blog, or it doesn’t earn you credits; also, to go to the next one, there’s a “captcha”, a varying place you have to click, to prevent people from using a “robot” program to do it automatically.
I’ve been trying out 5 of these services, and they have worked reasonably well, I have been getting dozens of accesses, daily, from each. The are:
I’ve been using them for less than a week, so it’s still too early to say if one is significantly better (or worse) than the others. I find that Firefox, with its tabs support, is perfect for using the five of them at the same time. 
A great side effect is that, by browsing other blogs to earn credits, I’ve discovered some very interesting ones - not often, but once in a while. They’ve even given me ideas for articles of my own (mostly for my other blogs, not this one).
One drawback, though - from looking at my logs, a lot of people are, indeed, just browsing for credits - they just see the front page, but don’t read any of the full articles. Some are sure to do it because they like other kinds of blogs (for instance, I find that many people in BlogExplosion have religious or conservative blogs, so that’s probably what they’re interested in, and they won’t find that in any of mine), but a great many are probably merely collecting credits. I guess it’s inevitable that some people do that. Still, some real readers have arrived from these services, and that’s always a good thing.
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Hi there. Thank you for providing such wonderful information for your users! I use a few of those, but mostly just Blog Advance now, as i find i get many more visitors, and a great many more genuine comments.
BA~~4
I use mainly Blog Advance. I disagree with your statement that people are only browsing for credits, at least when it comes to Blog Advance.
I’ve noticed that the average staying time overall is over 2 minutes per visitor so some people are staying in there for a long time, if most are only dedicated to getting the credits.
I’ve noticed also, that Blog Advance members are leaving comments in posts that aren’t the most recent and I’ll not be leaving this service.
BA~~19
Deb: I didn’t say everyone was browsing for credits, but it’s a fact that many people do, because I don’t have longer articles in full in my blogs’ front pages (there are “read more” links), and many visitors only see the front page, and nothing more.
Note also that I didn’t say not to use these services - much the opposite, I think they’re great, not only for getting more visits to your blog(s), but also for discovering new, interesting blogs. But visitors don’t equal readers - much less regular readers.
I hadn’t heard of blog advance, though I do blogazoo. I’ve got accounts on blogexplosion and blogclicker, but don’t really use those any longer.
I too came to know of your blog through Blogexplosion.
Nice series you have here
I found Blogexplosion traffic to be worthless. Stats showed that visitors from BE were only surfing for credits, never commented or clicked on any links. After surfing their member blogs for a while it’s clear why - they are mostly mommy blogs and political rant blogs. Since mine isn’t one of those it never got read.
I found a couple others to be far better. Blogadvance looks to have a better class of blogs and visitors. Still getting started with Blogazoo but it looks good so far.
So, skip Blogexplosion. You’ll get visitors but the traffic is worthless (in my experience).
geomark: my experience isn’t as bad as yours. I’ve found some very interesting blogs through BE, and I also got some “real” visits from there.
But it’s true, most people are just surfing for credits. Yet, even in those cases, sometimes they may see something of interest to them, and actually read it.
You have to accept low rates of “real visitors”, though - perhaps 1 in 100.
As for differences between the several services… To this day, I didn’t get the impression that “this network has more blogs like this, and that network has more blogs like that”. And a lot of blogs are in all of the exchangers. But I’ll try to pay more attention to this matter.