What I'm wondering is this: If I give away a few free (very) small web space accounts with the deal that they will have a link to my site on every page, will this help my page rank? Each site would have a different subdomain: example: my site is: customfighters.com these free sites would be whatever.customfighters.com My site is about motorcycles, and every single one of these free sites would also be about motorcycles, so they would be relevant content. As far as google's page rank is concerned, would having my link on a subdomain of my own site help? Or because it is a subdomain of my site will it not matter?
I believe that internal links DO pass page rank, so if someone had a subdomain on your site that they promoted independently and got PR for, that PR would pass in part to your main site (assuming there is a link between the two). If the subdomain wasn't itself promoted (ie got no inbound links), the benefit would probably be negligible.