wheel - 10:47 pm on Nov 14, 2009 (gmt 0)

No, I think you're doing the right thing. You've just missed a small thing. Nobody hits the ground running when it comes to link development. Over time you'll just get better at recognizing who to ask and who not to bother with, and how to word our emails. practice practice practice. Your results suck but one of two things will happen. you'll either quit, or if you're like me and to stupid to quit eventually you'll get a bit better, then a bit better.

however, one thing you may want to do is target a bit tigher. It's almost as simple as 'good content, go ask for links' - but better is to look at your content first, then determine who might link to that.

So pick a page on your site that has great content. Not the whole site, just one page. now go looking for sites (do searches) that would be interested in just that page. Find sites that rank on the terms that are on that page and either ask them to link to you (using that page as a reason). Second thing, if they are unlikely to link to you, see who links to the ranking sites' page (i.e. find other pages that rank on that term, and see who links to those pages - and ask those people to link to you. but you have to check the linking at a page level not a site level).

Now you can say "hey startstuff. I was wondering you would link to my site example dot com. I've got {something} that i think visitors to your site will find interesting".

So keep pluggin' away.