Most good web sites have a "links" or "favorites" section which recommends other good sites. Sometimes these sites are related in some way to the primary purpose of the site, and sometimes they have nothing to do with it at all.

This is a great idea and every site should have one. Why? It allows you to "exchange links" with other webmasters. This is a great way to get some additional traffic to your site for little effort.

Here's how it works. You are a webmaster with a site about peanuts surfing the web. You come across another site all about peanuts and it looks pretty good. You add that site to your links page, then send the webmaster an email requesting that he put your link on his page (make sure he has a links page first). If you have some banners or buttons, attach those to the email (if appropriate) and offer to let him use one of those. Be sure to make it easy for him by including all of the URLs and other data that he needs.

If you don't get an acknowledgement, don't be afraid to resend the message a week or so later.

You want to add his link to your page first as a gesture of good faith, and to show him that you thought his site was of high enough quality to recommend it to your own visitors.

Nine times out of ten, this works like a charm. You get added to his links page and it only cost you a few minutes to write up an email. Now it's automatic - you don't need to worry about it anymore. More than likely you will only get a few visitors a month from something like this, but it adds up over time.

And there is a much bigger payoff - getting you page listed on other sites increases your popularity to some search engines. This moves you higher in search list, which improves tremendously the number of people who will visit your site. An indirect but very definite return on investment.