actually a good trader can send very productive hits to his trade partners. one thing is that you don't HAVE to skim - you can trade traffic only from a toplist and tgp links throughout the page. if guys are expecting to be sent elsewhere, they can be very productive.

another thing that you can do to keep your productivity higher is to send the first click to each gallery to a gallery, rather than to a trade. the happier you keep your traded surfers, the more they click at their destination.

other things to consider are that if you trade with sites like your site, the productivity will be higher on your site and theirs. if you are a thumb preview MGP, and you trade with text TGPS, the overall productivity will probably not be as high as if two thumb preview MGP's are trading hits.

also thumb preview tgps grow faster, and send a lot of traffic back and forth, but on the other hand, tgps with accurate categories or accurate descriptions have higher productivity, which means more clicks, sales and bookmarkers. no-skim tgps that only trade through hard links and a toplist will gather the most long-term search engine and bookmark traffic. these TGPs and MGPs are the slowest to grow, but the best in terms of traffic quality.