This post is one that will address a questions that new and old bloggers often have about networking in the blogosphere – it may also make me seem like a bit of a snobbish arse in the process, but that’s the risk I’m willing to take

Every day, I get at least 5-10 requests for link exchanges… sometimes more, sometimes less. As you can tell by my links page, I turn down near all of them… in fact, I haven’t really touched that page for a month. As I don’t have a blogroll, it is a bit unfair to exchange links with others, and I will probably get rid of that page completely soon.

What I’m talking about is how newbie bloggers are a bit naive – sure, when I was a startup I wanted to promote my blog, but to exaggerate a bit – I didn’t ask John Chow, Problogger or Shoemoney for link exchanges – I asked people with similar levels of readers and traffic. Why will bigger bloggers be unwilling to listen to your requests?

People want to move up.

The reason people ask for link exchanges is because they want to better their blogs – it is very unlikely that one will approach a worse off blogger (in terms of traffic, readers and quality) for a link exchange – people want to move up. Just as were I to do link exchanges, I would ask someone better off, or at very least equal to TUK rather than a brand new blog, most blogs that are bigger than you will feel the same way.

People think you have crap content.

I pity those that do, but I often get link exchange requests from people that type like a three year old or just have content that isn’t very interesting. Whereas some may think that reporting what the ‘A-listers’ talk about time and time again, for most of us, that kind of stuff just isn’t interesting – if I wanted to know what John Chow ate for lunch, I’d visit his own blog. There are many blogs out there that are just regurgitating ones – they provide no unique opinions of their own, and sadly are not worth reading.

People think you have unrelated content.

If you run a dating blog, don’t ask someone in the make money online niche for links. First off, they’re going to turn you down, second off they’re going to think you’re a bit deluded. If your blog isn’t related to the one you want to exchange links with, don’t ask. It doesn’t help if you have unrelated links – both in the eyes of the search engines, and in the eyes of your readers – they’ll wonder why the hell you have prominent links displayed that go to websites they aren’t interested in.

People think your blog is just too new.

There are a great deal of newbie bloggers that think they’re going to get rich blogging, so start up a blog and think they’ll be earning $1,000 a month starting from their first month – after struggling and earnings pennies, they soon stop. I know the feeling – it’s happened to me before, with a couple of sports blogs I used to run; I got tired of writing posts every day that no one read and made pennies in advertising – it simply wasn’t worth it, even at those rates.

If you’re a new blog, there’s a pretty decent chance that you won’t be around in a month – remember, if you don’t have initiative, you are not going to make it. Due to that possibility, most bloggers just won’t entertain exchanging links with a blog that isn’t at least one or two months old – simply because you may not be around in a short while, not matter how good your content.

If you are a new blogger, you can of course exchange links with blogs of a similar niche that are of a similar age; don’t expect older, more established blogs to take up your link exchange requests though

How can you profit off the bigger blogs?

Apart from their useful content (on some blogs, at least) you may think that bigger blogs than yours are useless to you. However, you can still make use of them, even if they don’t want to exchange links.

Ask for a guest post.

A guest post not just allows you to gain a link or two back to your blog but also allows you to gain exposure to your website – in fact, if well written, a guest post can be better than a paid review. Whereas a paid review relies on the opinion of the blogger – if your website isn’t liked by him/her, they’re going to say so – a guest post allows you to make your own impression on the audience.

To have a guest post accepted, you’ll have to make it high-quality – it won’t be accepted if it isn’t; if it’s interesting, you’ll not just benefit from the traffic received through the post but also from the knowledge of readers – the next time they come across your blog, they’ll remember the quality you put in during your guest post on x’s blog and will be more likely to come back.

Become a top commenter

Most blogs incorporate this these days – the famous Top Commentators widget. By commenting on blogs, you’ll get a sidebar link – as good as a Blogroll one, and this link is of course dofollow - meaning any PR of the homepage will be passed on to your website. By making quality comments, you not just get a link in the sidebar, but also click throughs to your website – people see that you’re making quality comments (or controversial ones) and they’re going to want to see the website behind the anchor text.

Remember, don’t use spammy anchor text – it’ll likely be deleted by the blog owner, or if he’s evil he might change it – after I promised that I’d change all spammy anchor text (like ‘Car Rental Loans’ for example) to Happy Red Penguins, I haven’t received any more comments of that ilk.

Become a friend of the blogger

Although this may be difficult with some of the bigger blogs – the writers behind those are often a world away from the people that read them, if you become a friend – a comrade of the more medium sized bloggers – they’ll be more likely to exchange links, or help you in times of need. Remember, if you need help, be polite, and don’t push – nothing irritates me more than people that constantly use the ‘buzz’ button on MSN Messenger because you’ve gone away from the chat window for ten seconds.

Ask, ask, ask!

Even if you run a blog that’s too young for blogroll link exchanges, you might still be able to get links elsewhere if you’re too lazy to comment – a simple email, or ping on instant messenger to a blogger when you need a link to a blog post that you think is great or a contest that you’re running and most of them should be happen to comply. Make sure that the post you’re asking to be linked to is relevant though, and that it really is quality (if you’re unsure, ask for a second opinion from a friend) – you don’t want to be wasting anyone’s time (and leaving a bad impression).

I’ve already mentioned on here that I’ll plug anything you want if I think that my readers will find it interesting

Why don’t I have Blogroll links?

I touched on this before, but I’ll answer the question again just because - I don’t have Blogroll links because I think they’re useless. Rather than exchange links with a blog that I’ll visit once to check out and we’ll have no further interaction after that, I prefer the Top Commentators widget – people that take an interest in TUK (in the form of comments) are rewarded with a dofollow PR3 link. If you’re too lazy to comment so much, you could also leave a shout in the shoutbox – comments there get you a link back to your website as well.

Emails – Jason, WTF!?

I thought I mentioned this at the beginning, but anyways, apologies if this wasn’t the case – I’m not answering most emails while I’m on holiday, mainly because I don’t have time. I do have a couple hundred I need to catch up on, so if you have any pressing concerns, send them again.

New advertisers

I’d like to welcome two new advertisers to the blog – IMRookie, another Internet Marketing blog (sweet design!) and Lazy-Riches, the new owner of my old, old eBook. Thank them for me and take a look at their websites . If you’re interested in advertising, you can take a look at them rates.