I have seen many people just asking for links either for free or they blindly exchange links. I would like to put my point that Quality is what matters the most. One should see the relevancy and theme of a page to be linked. If it is good, it would be more beneficial than numerous free links. You should read www.linkpopularitymatters.com/knowledge-base for more.
If you can get a link on their website's main page I think it'll count for quality regardless of whether it's related Though, in most cases a quality site that can draw traffic is better then 100 sites that offer nothing to anybody. My links pages get very few views... in fact, I think the only people that visit my link pages are when I am updating them *smirk* My referrals tend to not come from the link pages I am on (including directories)... however, I can good traffic from in-content links. Do link pages offer any perks for PR or SERP? Maybe... but they are certainly not bringing in any measurable direct traffic. Get a few low quality links, they certainly wont hurt (assuming they are within the SE guidelines of google etc) however, your focus should be for quality and for traffic.
good post most people think that its quantity over quality but thats not true 1 quality link is worth more than 100 rubbish links
It matters, but overall i wouldnt go for just quality, i would mix it up. I would try to aim for 70% quantity 30% other Why? beacuse u want to make it look natural.
I agree on quality. I've seen sites that have good PR because of only a few very high quality backlinks. At least that's how it looked from doing some backlink research.