Rule #2: always monitor productivity
 

Which would you prefer.... 10 people that produces only 1 click, or one person that produces 10 clicks? The answer should be obvious, and if you can't figure it out, you're an idiot. The fact is clear... all link trade partners would love to send you their worst traffic to get YOUR best. If they don't, they're the idiot and you're just lucky.

Not entirely true...

To be honest, I would rather find someone where my site content closely matches my trade partner, so that the surfer clicks on BOTH sites, and shows good productivity on BOTH sites.

That is how you develop LONG TERM and PRODUCTIVE trades. Just like relationships, you need to weed out a few bad apples to find the right partner.

Once your site is stable and generating good SE traffic and productive trades, you should be able to basically sit back and watch the sales flow in...

All of this takes work and time of course.

What's not entirely true? Cause what you wrote tells me we're not talking about the same thing.

Your quote about...

"The fact is clear... all link trade partners would love to send you their worst traffic to get YOUR best."

That's not entirely true as per my explanation above. :2 cents:

You're talking about something else dude. Site content has nothing to do with this rule.