Link exchange? from my experience, link exchange still works but we might need some different approach. the “relevance” of your link partners seems very important for search engines to decide whether you should be wearing a ’spam-tag’ or not.

As Google always advise webmasters to write for the human but not for the SE bots, link exchange comes in same - link exchange for your web users but not bots.

Put in useful links to websites that’re useful to your web users, and ask for a link back. For example if you’re selling flowers on your web, you might want to link exchange with those websites who offer restaurant booking services (for a romantic dinner), ebook websites that teach dating skills, dating websites, as well as gift shopping websites. I bet such strategy will not just give an impact on your web SERP ranking but also your web user’s experience.

Saying such, i believe that all link pages created solely for link exchange has no value to exist at all nowadays.