nickg - 11:24 am on Nov 18, 2007 (gmt 0)

as an old hand in telemarketing (i did it for 2 years selling ad space) I think a mix of emails and phone calls works very well.

link building is a sales process. sometimes you have a site in great demand and it sells itself and most of the time you have to push it along (when it comes to link building).

in normal offline business, you send an email or a brochure (the more impressive the better) wait a couple of days and call. This way you find out who the decision maker is and wether they are actually interested in your offering and from there you build the value of your proposition - leading to a sale / amicable trade between 2 parties.

so why is it so bad to do what sales teams have done for years? Bear in mind, you are mostly not talking to end user consumers at 8.00 in the evening, but webmasters.

Its only bad when you have a *hit site and you're trying to peddle something with which there is no interest.