Effective and creative ways of getting links

Share your tips please, here's a few of mine...

[SincerelySandy]

There's a few people that know very effective or clever ways of getting good quality links. I'm probably an amateur at getting links. I'm sure there's got to be a few good techniques I'm not aware of or haven't thought of. So share them if you got them... here's a couple of my favorite methods.
1) When I send out a well written and personalized e-mail request for a link, I will often offer money or a link back. An e-mail with "Will pay or trade for a link" tends to get read more often than "link exchange request". So if the link is relevant, and if it's worth some amount of money to me, I will offer to pay for it. I get some great links this way on very relevant sites from site owners that don't normally "sell links" but are happy to have a few extra dollars for putting a relevant link on their site.

2) Hunting links: When I am searching for links I like to make good use of the search tools. For example, if I am searching for links from .edu or .gov sites, I will include site:edu in the search such as widgets site:edu . Each time I look at a site I will add it to my search in this format -siteialreadysaw.edu . This way I don't keep looking at the same sites each time I use a different search term or a different search engine. For example after searching for widgets site:edu -siteialreadysaw.edu -anothersiteisaw.edu -anothersiteiseen.edu (the list can get pretty long) I can change my search term to purple widgets and keep all of the advanced operators. I can also copy all of my advanced operators and paste it into the search bar of another search engine. This also helps keep me from looking at different subdomains of the same site. As you get more specific in your searches you tend to see alot of the same sites over and over so using advanced operators like this can speed up a process.

[MrSpeed]

SincerelySandy -
I was just toying with this exact same idea.
How much money do you offer for the link and is it for a permanent link? I bet there are a slew of webmasters that don't appreciate the value of links and would be happy to get $10 to place a link on their site.

[Teshka]

An e-mail with "Will pay or trade for a link" tends to get read more often than "link exchange request".

What's to keep those webmasters from dropping your link a month or a year down the road and keeping your money?

I've had the most luck sending tips to popular blogs that provide a link if they use your tip. (I'm not sure how well that would work if your site is totally unrelated, but it's gotten me some nice exposure for free.)

[SincerelySandy]

How about using a reciprocal link building service?

I haven't seriously considered using one of these types of services. Partly because I like one way links the best, parlty because most of the "partners" are going to put you on a page with a bunch of other links and not much content, partly because most people that are actively looking for links like this are primarily concerned with PR.

How much money do you offer for the link

I've never offered less than $50 or more than $600, but if I found a really great link, I would be happy to pay much more than $600 . The other day I offered $400 for a link on an directly related, high traffic .edu site online since 1991. If the person e-mails me back, and does not accept the first offer, I will offer a few hundred more.

What's to keep those webmasters from dropping your link a month or a year down the road and keeping your money?

Me. I can be an extremely persuasive person. When I used to do design work for other people and companies, I always did the job first and collected money after. Only if the estimate was over 10 grand I would require half the money up front. I don't recommend this, but I personally have never been stiffed by a client or even had to get pushy.

[edited by: sugarrae at 3:31 pm (utc) on April 11, 2006]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]

[SincerelySandy]

awesome blackhat XSS form field method

No thanks, there are enough theives on the internet already and I don't have any respect for theives anyway. I enjoy being able to respect myself and what I do. It's funny to me how hard most people work at trying to make money online by stealing, scraping, deceiving, scamming, content theft... I'm fairly certain that I work a lot less than these people for a lot more money, all while managing to provide useful content and products and not doing anything to anyone that I wouldn't want done to me.