I found this comment from Hugh Mcleod's blog to be quite on the mark,

7. Five years of blogging later, I have learned this to be true: Traffic doesn't matter. Being linked to by A-Listers matters even less. What matters most is building one's network, one person at a time. As Adriana says, "The Network is mightier than The Node".

Full blog article
In particular he is speaking about blogging, but I think the concept can be fit to just about any network. Your experience?