We all know it's important to get links to our sites to increase 
our traffic as well as link popularity. Yet, the process is both 
daunting and frustrating of finding contacts, keeping track of 
things and skimming directory listings.

Instead of only offering a link back, have you thought of 
enhancing your offer?

Be different and offer something of value for a link back to 
your site. It could be an ebook, a free webpage, creation of 
a banner, ad in your ezine for free or a consult. Stand out 
from the crowd by offering something unique and different. For 
sites that seem out of your reach you can think of a unique 
package that would work with the webmaster's site. If the 
webmaster likes what you gave him or her then that offer might 
even be put on the site itself and you'll get more webmasters 
linking to you.

One way I've done this for a site of mine was through offering 
a few webmasters with nice traffic and also popular ezines a 
free email consult giveaway to 3 subscribers. They were happy 
to both put the link on their website as well as advertise 
it in their ezine as a random draw. The subscribers who were 
chosen then sent me an e-mail discussing a personal issue and 
I sent them suggestions incorporating meditation, yoga and 
ideas to help out.

This is something that could be done with your expertise whether 
it's web design, internet marketing , cgi scripts, tutorial on 
using ebay etc etc.

Another trade I've done is I ran a free ad in my quotations 
newsletter in exchange for a link. I did this both for the 
webmaster and for a subscriber he gave it to in his ezine as 
a gift. Again, I received both a link to my site as well as 
a link within the ezine itself sent out to 5000 subscribers.

Think about what you can offer a webmaster and his visitors and 
your e-mail to him/her will be re-read a few times and thought 
about.