Yes, I do.
I found it to be a no small part to the influence of the reader and the increase in new members to your forum, but the forum that you want to exchange banner forum is the quality and stability of traffic.
I did this primarily when we first opened - with forums at the range we were at or looking at being soon. Now we affiliate with forums with about the same amount of members/posts as us so we don't affiliate too often.
I have heard the occasional person saying they found us after clicking them though so it does work! 🙂
I honestly don't think that most do anything, especially if you're only affiliating with small forums/websites. Until you're able to hang with the big guns, I don't think it'll help you much.
I don't think this is a very effective tactic personally, although it definitely doesn't hurt. It's more important to focus on exchanging posts than affiliate images for a new forum, in my opinion.
