A WebmasterWorld goes on another rant about how hard it is to do link building these days. There is a lot of confusion in the SEO industry, which makes it harder and harder for link builders to do their jobs.
That being said, senior WebmasterWorld member, Wheel, said that in the past few months, his link building efforts - which was primarily done via email requests, has had a horrid return on investment. In the past, he said he would get a "reasonable response" from his link request emails, but now, he is getting practically zero response. To counteract this change, he decided to go about it in a different way.
He is now building relationships with people that can link to him. The best relationship, he said, is those that you pay money. He isn't necessarily paying them money for a link. Instead he is creating ad networks within his niches and paying them money for those banners. After he has paid them and earned a solid relationship with them, he then discusses ways for those webmasters to link to his site.
As wheel said: "to get those links, it's now all about relationship building."
I think most link builders would say relationship links are way more effective than others. But at the same time, relationship links take more time and effort to get.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.