I have fours sites but never bothered much about link building until I discovered this forum. Question is how many links to put on per page in my link exchanges ? I'm thinking no more than thirty. I don't think your link will ever get found if it is number 200 on the 25th page of some sites link exchange. I want the links to be useful to my visitors and also help my sites with ranking.
If you're talking about the link page on daytrippen.com I don't think you should too many more. I think you've done a great job with your links page. It's well organized with clear descriptions about each link. I completely agree with you that the link page should be useful. I think you've done a good job with yours. I wouldn't want to see it go beyond one or two pages max.
Why should link exchanges be restricted to links pages? I have a links page which I try to keep as relevant to my site as possible. I have no idea how many links are on it but that page is for my visitors anyway. On the other hand if I find an exchange I am interested in my site is restricted geopgraphically but covers quite a wide range of topics, travel, property, golf, diving, etc., so if I find a link exchange that is relevant to one of these topics I will try to negotiate an exchange between content pages. I wish more people were open to this because I think it benefits both parties.
If I receive requests to add my sites to link pages get read then the request goes straight in the trash. All my link pages can have links submitted directly and I generally ignore link requests for additions to those pages. The only reason I read them is incase the request comes from some major site which I would pay special attention to. As far as I'm concerned the only link requests that are worth sending via email are (as e10 says) content -> content exchanges.
I add links to product pages too, because they have a bigger PR. The reciprocals have the better quality from all my incoming links.
I like pages with less than 25. If they have less than 15 I am more likely to give them some higher quality links. Also, don't limit yourself to "link pages". Create some useful pages for your users and leave space on it to give links from. In my opinion this is a smarter way to go about it. This will attract higher quality sites wanting to get links from you.
Any link page with more than 30 is not all that great. Then again it depends on the pr of that link page. What if a website placed your link on a pr 6 link page but it had 40 links on the page? I mean that has to account for something, right?
I have varios industry related sites if you want to link with them just contact me and will place your link on pages hving not more than 30 links