ReciprocalLink.Com / Reciprocal Link Articles / Top Ten Things Not to Do... / Page 2   Top ten Things Not to Do When Asking to Trade Reciprocal Links (cont.) 5) Do not, in your first message, briefly mention reciprocal link trading and then go on to the subject of asking me for money for some product or service. It may be OK if I respond with a relevant offer, or if your next message contains such offers after we have developed a relationship, but don't start off in your first message talking about prices. Many people find messages like that to be borderline SPAM. 4) Do not forget to tell the webmaster which page with which you want to trade links. In fact, mention the URL as well. I receive requests CONSTANTLY that fail to mention this information. As I run many sites, I always first have to ask the name of the website to which they were referring. Usually, the sender has sent the requests by a blind carbon-copy mail, so they don't remember the name of the website. Most people would be too embarrassed to reply that they don't know the name of the website. Opportunity is lost. 3) Do not write a letter with obvious punctuation and grammar errors throughout the message. I'm not expecting webmasters to have the eloquence of Mark Twain or Robert Frost, but I also don't expect to see what could be considered a bad E. E. Cummings clone, either. If you write a stock message to all webmasters, please proofread it first or have your word processor proof the message! 2) Do not ask to trade reciprocal links, and if I do not respond within 24 hours, ask again. Then, please do not keep asking me until I do respond! Like many other webmasters, I am quite busy and usually put off trading reciprocal links until I get many requests. That way, I can handle all of the requests at once. A follow-up message after one week is fine, but don't harass me. You need a way to record which sites you have asked for reciprocal links to avoid this problem. Envision Programming is working on such a product and plans to have it on ReciprocalLink.Com shortly. And, of course, 1) Do not use an invalid E-Mail address. For gosh sakes, you should know your E-Mail address if you wish to correspond with people. If you mistype your address, that's one thing, but to leave it out or put in an address without an at-sign or period, then.... well, you better at least have mentioned your website URL or I will just send the message to the trash. Even with an URL, I may trash the message anyway if the e-mail address is invalid. Most of these items should be common sense, but in case they're not, hopefully you have learned something from this article. Now, go out there and trade some reciprocal links - the right way!