Starting Your Link Building Campaign - Best Practices

This article over at Search Engine Guide has a great walkthrough of how to craft that first batch of link requests for a new site:

Be personal. I began my email by explaining that I’d heard of her plight while visiting CNN’s web site. I went on to explain that I’d been an active milk donor in my own town and that I had been interested to read about how she’d purchased her own pasteurizer and was processing milk for her own children.

Be relevant. I briefly mentioned my own blog and my t-shirt shop and mentioned that I had written about her site on my own blog and that I hoped she would see some new visitors and interest from my readers.

Offer something of value. Finally, I suggested that since she receives a reasonable amount of traffic, she might consider adding AdSense to her site as another way to earn money. I also suggested that she consider becoming a Lactivist affiliate as another way to raise funds through the site. I told her that I would be happy to help her with the AdSense integration or with getting an affiliate account setup for the shop.