Just to explain the terms for those who are not familiar with them:

 traffic exchanges is a free method of getting traffic. The idea of a traffic exchange is that members view other members' websites for a certain period of time (10-20 seconds). In exchange for surfing other members' websites they receive traffic credits that are used to get traffic to their own website/s or links.

Safe list is a double opt-in list of people who agreed to receive emails from each other. This method of getting traffic can be free but you may choose to pay if you get attractive deals. By joining such a list you can send an email to the other members once, twice a week or even daily (depends on the list and your type of membership), the mail will generally contain a link to your website or an affiliate link.  

List builders is a kind of safe list. The difference is that you receive mail only from your upline and can send mail only to your downline. Generally there will be some possibilities to upgrade and get a downline for payment, instead of trying to recruit your downline.  

I put together these 3 methods because they have something in common. These methods of getting traffic can be very useful for some purposes, and totally useless for others. They are useful for business opportunities or for products for internet marketers, and can be particularly useful if you have a new and original product or a very special offer. If your target market is internet marketers then traffic exchanges, safe lists and list builders will bring you very targeted traffic, but you should know that the quality of the traffic is not very high. After all those who join a traffic exchange and safe lists do it just to get visitors to their own websites and to get readers to their own ads – they're not interested that much in others' offers. It's a little bit like selling ice to Eskimos, and you should take it in consideration. If you want to use these methods, you should do it wisely; otherwise you're wasting your time. 

How to Use Traffic exchange

As far as traffic exchange sites are concerned you have to know that surfers who visit your website will stay there no longer than 10-20 seconds. That is the period of time you have to impress them and present your offer. That implies 2 important things: your landing page should be very quick to load and should have only one very short and clear call for action -- either a comprehensible and short offer or even better a persuasive squeeze page -- not a general page full of different ads and links where it takes 1 hour just to figure out everything. People are surfing for credits, and if things are too complicated or vague they will leave your page without doing anything. The best of course is a squeeze page -- that will enable you to follow up with people, and will give you more time to present your offers and of course: "The money is in the list". But how will you entice people to give you their email address in 10 seconds? You better offer them something worthy in exchange -- a free ebook or report. You can have everything you need for your squeeze page and free stuff to giveaway all for free at Instant squeeze page generator. 

Of course your page for traffic exchange is one thing, but you should also have to surf for credits (unless you prefer to buy them). Here I will tell you how you can do it in the most efficient way I know of.  First, if you still don't use Firefox browser for surfing, then download it here for free www.firefox.com. Some people say that it is the best one to use, giving you better protection and better bookmarking system. I personally use Firefox for certain things and Internet Explorer for others. For using traffic exchanges it certainly the best, thanks to its bookmarking system.  

After installing Firefox, you should subscribe to at list 10 different traffic exchange programs, and keep their bookmarks in one library on the bookmarks list. At Affiliate Funnel you can have one list of traffic exchange programs and at Hoopla you can have another list of them. In both websites the list of traffic exchanges is according to users' satisfaction votes. Personally, my criteria to judge traffic exchanges is according to their exchange rate (how many credits for how many sites surfed) some give you 1 credit in exchange to 1-3 websites surfed, some will give you 2 or even more credit for one website surfed. There are significant differences and it is important to see. The prizes you get while surfing (in almost all traffic exchange programs) may also add to your credit balance or may give you other ways to expose your ads (like emailing other members or placing banners and text ads). Another criteria is functioning, some traffic exchanges have more technical problems than others.

The top 10 traffic exchange that brought most visits to my own website (based on my website traffic statistics) are: TrafficSwarm, EasyHits4u, FiveHits, TopTierTraffic, AdvertisingKnowHow, HitsBoosterPro, HitSafari, DragonSurf, GradeATraffic, StartExchange. The first 4 have the best exchange rate, HitsboosterPro has often great deals for paid membership and AdvertisingKnowHow give you great rewards for consistent surfing. Of course, when you go to Affiliate Funnel or Hoopla you will find many more traffic exchange Websites, some of them I tried, but I didn't try all the traffic exchanges. The traffic exchanges that are mentioned here were the best 10 among the traffic exchanges that I did try. When you subscribe to a traffic exchange site you will generally have a tab where it's written: "my websites" where you can load a link to your website. In most of traffic exchange sites you will also have a place to load your banners and text ads. In some of the traffic exchanges you may be in an "inactive" status, until you reach a minimum amount of credits. Another thing is that from time to time you have to see that your credits are actually assigned to your links. Sometimes, even where you have the option to assign your credits automatically, it doesn't happen for some reason, so you should do it manually once in a while. Now, after you subscribed to your chosen traffic exchanges and kept the bookmarks to all of them on one library in your bookmarks list, there is a function on Firefox that enables you to open at once all the links on a certain library in different tabs; all with one click.  

If you have something to offer to Internet marketers (like an Interesting business opportunity, or a useful product that helps marketers) I would suggest taking one hour a day just for surfing traffic exchanges. Open all your traffic exchange sites with one click, and just go from one tab to another, passing through all your traffic exchange sites. As you surf traffic exchange sites, you will generally have to click something in order to go to the next page and receive more credits. Most commonly after your 10-20 seconds are over a single image will appear on the traffic exchange frame and a group of images to choose from will appear nearby. You will have to click the same image (as the single) in the group of the other images. Sometimes there are systems in which it works slightly different (like 2 repeating images in the same group or a numerical value instead of image), but this is more or less the idea. So going back to your surfing, you should go from one tab to the other and click the images so that you can have your credits. If you find some interesting offer while surfing, you can always keep a link to the website, or save the page to your desktop and return to it later, when you're done with your 1 hour of surfing.

To increase your credits significantly subscribe to affiliate funnel and Hoopla, enter your username or ID number while you vote for the different traffic exchanges. Dedicate some of your credits to promote your links to Affiliate Funnel and Hoopla, or advertise your links in other ways. When other people will subscribe under you, you will receive credits for their surfing as well, and get other benefits if they Purchase paid services and products of Affiliate Funnel or Hoopla.

 How to Use Safe List and List Builders

Using a safe list and list builder mean that you will not only send emails but you will also receive many emails yourself, so never use your main e-mail address, and consider that others will do the same, therefore it takes consistency to see results.  In some of the safe lists there is a possibility to use credit mail, which is a very similar idea to that of the traffic exchange. It means that by reading others' mails and clicking the link to their websites you accumulate credits, and you can send extra mails to others using these credits. Those who receive your mails will gain credits by reading your mails and visiting your website, therefore, credit mails are naturally more effective.  Try to send your ads and sales letters as often as your membership allows you, maybe with different titles. By sending an ad once in a while you won’t see results. You can find free safelists on Affiliate Funnel and Hoopla.