europeforvisitors - 3:01 pm on Sep 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

I think there's another reason why it's harder to get links (and why, for example, I'm slower to give links):

With so many sites out there, the bar is higher than it was a few years ago.

Take the travel sector:

In the 1990s, I'd link to Web pages for [city] vacation apartments because most users didn't know they could rent furnished apartments for a few days or a week in [city], and if they did, they had no idea where to go. Nowadays, any user can find hundreds of listings with a Google search, so--except for grandfathered links from years ago--I'll link to a [city] apartment site only if:

- I've stayed in the apartment and am writing an article about it, or...

- There's something so cool or unique about the apartment or the owner's Web site that it merits a link.

Similarly, it wasn't so long ago that a useful site about Widgetberg or the Whatsit Islands was hard to find. Today, there are any number of perfectly adequate sites about those places, and a site that wants my attention (and a link) needs to be better than the ones I'm already linking to. I'm not interested in spending my days linking to any and every site about Widgetberg or the Whatsit Islands, especially when the content for so many new sites is little more than filler for pages of AdSense ads.

The Web is like any other business: If you're late to the party, you need to offer something that existing businesses don't. Being "as good as" (or, worse yet, merely being a copycat who doesn't even bother to be "as good as") isn't good enough.