8) PERMANENT LINK With a link exchange you get a link on a website related to yours that won't expire. Unlike search engines or FFA links pages, your link can't expire or be pushed off bottom of list and so no re-submission is neccessary. The only time your link could become inactive is if webmaster decides to delete your link, in which case you can delete theirs.

9) CUSTOMISABLE You should be able to submit your website title and a short description for exchange. Obviously it is down to webmaster who you are exchanging links with to decide exactly what is written, but if you are not happy it should be negotiable - remember you have bargaining power of placing a customised link for them on your site. If your link is being placed in a resource directory you could also be able to choose an appropriate category for your link to be placed in.

10) FAIR SWAP A link exchange should be a fair swap. Don't try to take advantage of a webmaster in a link exchange and vice versa. For example, if your link is going to have a description, then put a description for reciprocal link. If you place a websites link on your main page, then expect your link on their main page (this may not be case, however, if your website receives significantly less traffic than one you are linking to - be careful and be honest!)

SUMMARY Link exchanging is a free way to quickly receive targeted traffic, whilst building your link popularity and adding extra resources to your website. You should receive a permanent, customised link, in exchange for same on your site. In exchanging links you may meet other webmasters who run websites similar to yours who you may partner with later on for ad swaps etc. This is a great way to help yourself whilst helping others at same time.

You can exchange links with theinternetresource.co.uk by visiting http://www.theinternetresource.co.uk/linkex.htm

Besides, hopefully your site will be interesting enough to keep them around for awhile, and when they are done, then they will go and visit your links.

Now that we've covered excuses, let's look at how you can increase your chances of getting linked from other sites.

First thing is that you really should have a quality site. Don't just throw together a page of banners and expect people that have worked very hard to get hundreds of thousands of visitors to want to link to you. Your link adds no value to their site.

The next important item is to personalize your email to them. Actually take time to visit their site and find something that you like about it. Find contact information and even a name if it is listed.

Find specific category or page that you feel your site would fit well on and mention that page specifically in your email.

If they think your email is generic they'll delete it right away. I know I do. The latest fad is to use automated programs to create theme pages and blast out automatic emails to every site program finds.

This may work to an extent but more than likely only ones that really benefit from this are creators. The search engines already know about this and have provisions to penalize sites using these. Read through second bulleted topic on this page: http://doc.altavista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_popularity.html

They have quickly gone way of FFA pages, or Dodo.

If you make an honest effort at this you can expect a decent return for your efforts. Look for shortcuts and your chances of huge success are shorted.

The next logical question in all of this is how in world you find sites to link to you.

My favorite starting point is to find sites that are linking to my competition. If they are willing to link to my competitor, they just might be willing to link to me too.

I use this great resource: http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Its purpose is to show you how popular sites are in relation to others, and it gives a ranking such as Player, Contender, 900 lb Gorilla, etc.

When you get to that link just enter in a couple of your competitors, and your own URL as well, and click Generate Report. This will show you how you rate as compared to your competition.

The other nice feature is you can click on results for domain for each of search engines. Meaning, if it found 200 links to a site listed in HotBot, you can just click number 200 in listing and it will take you to HotBot results. Then you just visit each of those sites, learn a little about them, then fire off an email to webmaster.

This method should give you a great start and keep you busy for a while.

The bottom line is that there are many benefits to getting other sites to link to you, just don't let excuses keep you from getting linked!