Well, in theory I like that idea and appreciate it as it's good link etiquite and it theretically shows good-will...

Having said that, most of those types of requests get ignored by me as there's no good will at all.

- They tend to view it as a given that you will link back or that you must link back.

- The emails tend to be boilerplate.

- The links usually end up on page 300,000 jammed in somewhere between a thousand other links; with no real direct link from a page that gets crawled; or it was linked from a invisible link.

- The sites are often inapropriate.

Regardless of how the link request comes across or about I rarely say yes as most of the people who have asked me don't bother to reciprocate once they've gotten what they want.