David – I feel your pain. It’s a bloomin hard job that you don’t see results on for months on end, and is never-ending. But it’s also one of the essential elements of a successful website – Indeed I used to claim to be the laziest link builder in the world, but my New Years Resolution for 2008 was to link-build on a regular basis, and as we head towards the end of the year, I’m really starting to see the benefits of doing so.

“is it not possible to partially automate such a repetitive task? ” – It certainly is, and I’ve been doing just that for a couple of my sites this year, by outsourcing my link-building for those sites. The company I use work pretty much as you mention: You can manage the links through a central website, link requests (to good quality, relevant sites) are sent out automatically, links are checked for you (and dead ones removed), and best of all they not only deal with reciprocal links, but they even write content for other site owners, gaining a number of hugely relevant one-way links.

Let me know if you’d like me to arrange a free quote from them for you – They’re not cheap, but they are quality.

After spending a lot of time on a project, just when you think the real work is done, the tedious process of building and maintaining links starts. And when you have multiple sites, each needing X new links a day…

While I guess link building is the online version of networking, is it not possible to partially automate such a repetitive task?

I’ve thought of developing a service like this myself, where affiliates would register their sites, and drop a component on their site/blog that renders links. All management would be carried out through a central website, browsing/searching for suitable sites, requesting links/auto-approving links (with the links being automatically created/removed on both sites), daily checking of valid links, etc. NOT a link farm, just making the process of managing links easier.

Like most ideas (most of mine, anyway), I never got round to it

Doug