I have a couple programs that I mass submitted to download sites. These are freeware programs which try to get visitors to come to my site to click through. You might consider them ad ware. However the programs mostly work and provide good features - like downloading and displaying pictures of assorted starlets.
Most sites posted my submission entries. However a small percentage informed me that they required me to link to them from my web page before they would list my software. This rubbed me the wrong way. I consider my software valuable, and given that it was free, a benefit to the sites that listed the software. There is no way I was going to link to these sites in exchange for a listing.
Now there is nothing inherently evil about asking for a link. I get it. They are trying to increase their inbound links to improve their page rank. But recently I have given more thought to this setup. Who you link to is just as important as who links to you. If you link out to some spammy sites, your site may get penalized by the search engines. And we do not want that.
The safest thing to do is to link to those sites that are truly deserving. And this is what I do. If a download site has a lot of traffic, and quickly adds my submission, they get a link from me. After all, I want people to go to those sites and download my software. But I am not going to risk my own page rank by linking to a "bad" site.
