From Wendy Boswell,
Your Guide to Web Search.
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When writing another Webmaster, asking them to place a link on their site to yours, it is important to follow a few simple rules and suggestions to better your odds of success. The first thing to remember is that you are asking them for a favor, not the other way around. Chances are they have a site with more traffic and a higher PageRank than your own. By placing a link to your site on theirs, they are helping to improve your link popularity, and perhaps, down the road, your Google Pagerank as well.

Six Rules for a Reciprocal Link Exchange

1. Be courteous. Yes, this seems like it should be obvious enough, but you would be surprised how many people attempt to demand links, or boast about their own websites. Both are big mistakes, and will result in your e-mail being placed in the trash bin nearly instantaneously. Be nice and courteous without over-doing it.
2. Watch your spelling and grammar. You wouldn't want to give a potential employer a resume full of spelling and grammar mistakes, would you? Same thing applies here. These people can potentially mean ruin or success for your new website venture, so it's important to make the right impression. Also, you are representing your site when you are sending that e-mail, and you want your recipient to see your site in a professional, positive light.
3. Link to their site first! This one is so simple, yet so overlooked. If you place a link on your site to their first, that gives them all the more reason to put forth a little effort to link to your site as well. After all, if someone does you a favor first, don't you feel a little obligated to return that favor? In addition, it's a good idea to go ahead and include in your e-mail the code for your link. People are lazy, let's face it, and the less work they have to do the better chance they will actually do it.
4. Send the e-mail from your website address only. For instance, if your website is kittenboots.org, it's best to send your prospective link partners your request via the address: contact@kittenboots.org, or something similar. Don't use johndoe@hotmail.com, or some other free e-mail service. It's simply unprofessional.
5. Have a professionally designed and written webpage. Even if you don't have a high pagerank, you can still have a nice-looking website. The better looking your site, the better chance you have of getting someone else to want to link to it. Same goes for website content – the better your content, and the more useful it is to your visitors, the more appeal it has to potential link partners (they will see that your site has potential for growth, etc.).
6. Keep your e-mail message short and sweet. Try note to brag about your site, ask questions, or flatter the person (or the person's site) that you are writing to. Usually 2 – 4 sentences are plenty. If it's longer than that, you may lose their attention altogether.