Let me cite just one example of how fools lose their way by mistaking the nature of links. It took me 50 seconds to reach NetMind through Yahoo, even though Yahoo hadn't yet indexed the company. Obviously a mere list of home pages is a waste of a user's time at this point, but I get incredible value from Newslinx , a service that lists the day's Internet news stories and saves me hours per week in research time. Certainly I don't begrudge them the ad avails in return, and neither should the news sites, since I'm getting more value from their work as a result, too. So I came up with this Clue.
Links are easy, but useful links are hard.
If you're going to link to information on a commercial site, you're going to have to check them for accuracy regularly. You should also take the time to offer deep links, not to the front door of the site, but to the specific page where information of interest to your audience is located. If you take the time to do this, and let your readers know you're doing this, you're providing a valuable service. If you do this for an industry, providing deep links to news, the changing players, and valuable trends, you become a player, too, once the industry finds your links page. Once you get in the game this way, and provide value, you'll begin a dialogue that can lead to profit.