Here’s a little lesson in supply and demand: your demand for links will be insatiable but your supply will be limited. The best possible world for you as a blogger would be to have every blog in the world sending traffic to you, but your blog will have only room to send traffic to a small percentage of them in return. As a result, your links are valuable, and you should treat them as a treasured commodity: hoarded until needed and then spent with the attitude that you must squeeze the most value out of each one.
As you begin building your Blog Empire from a small duchy on the outer edge of the blogosphere to an empire covering much of its virtual continent, you will, to be honest, not have a lot to offer other bloggers. Your traffic will be small. Your brand will be unknown. The big blogs will ignore you and the little ones will do you no good. However, that’s no excuse not to start trading your links for whatever you can get for them.
Do an occasional internet search for pages that link to you. Many times, your control panel will pick up any page that links to one of your entries, but much of the time it will mean using Google, Technorati, or MSN searches to see who is linking you. Then check out their blog to see what it might have to offer. If it’s a teenage girl’s rant blog that seems to have 3 visitors a day or if it’s a blog that is updated monthly, it may not be worth a reciprocal link. However, if you discover that it’s a popular destination for people who might be interested in what you have to say, then it’s probably worthwhile to drop in, thank the blogger for the link, and join in the discussion. Those readers who are interested in your entry will probably pay you a visit.
Just remember, your links are valuable! Check them constantly to ensure that each one points to a blog that is earning its keep on your front page. Those blogs that have gone into hibernation or that have dropped you should be eliminated. Cull your links repeatedly and mercilessly and always be on the lookout for opportunities to upgrade.
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