Effectiveness of link exchanges?

I'm looking for effective backlink methods.

Getting caught up in the details can really waste a lot of time, especially if it's just a bunch of discussion about theories etc.

So I'm wondering what kind of results people have gotten from blog carnivals and similar link exchanges. If you post links on your blog weekly, then submit to other sites for niche-related link exchanges shouldn't that be very effective?

I can not say I'm an expert but I did try some of the main stream link exchanges a few years back. I thought they were very ineffective. Most sites you will exchange with have little to no page traffic and bad page rankings. But I'm sure you could find some out there if you did your homework that were good.

One way anchor text pointing to you is always going to be the best way to go about it. Link exchanges are shit in my opinion and absolutely do nothing for you. There are probably better ways to spin them but personally I don't mess with them at all anymore.