link trades or paid traffic?
 

How important would you say are link trades if you have enough capital to buy your traffic on a regular basis? Seems to be a lot of work to get meaningful link trades and a lot easier to yank out your credit card and still get great results from the folks at Google or Cybercat, etc...

a good mix of as many type of traffic as possible works best

Depends on what site, budget
time, strategy and ambitions you have...