Since everything you do on your website eats up a little or a lot of your time, it makes sense to evaluate the potential payback from your efforts. You want to get the most bang for your buck. Here are some things to consider when working with links:

Will the link be permanent? A permanent link will be far more valuable in the long run for both potential clickthroughs and link popularity evaluations. The exception would be a prominent short-term link to a high traffic site like CNN that could send tens of thousands of visitors to your site. Don't waste your time on Free-For-All Link deals. These are places where anyone can place a link. Search engines look unfavorably on them.

A few links from really high traffic sites will most likely produce more for you than lots of links from no traffic sites.

When granting an outbound link you will get more mileage out of the link if it goes to a specific related site. Outbound links to unrelated sites could hurt your overall ranking. But if it's an unrelated site that is giving you a reciprocal link, it is still very valuable to you. You will not be penalized because it is unrelated.

link to your site with related text located near the link will get more clickthroughs than a link by itself.

link buried among many others will not get many click throughs, but will still be valuable for link popularity reasons. Don't turn such a link down, but try to negotiate for a top or exclusive position in your category.

A Links in articles about the same topic get lots of attention and a good click through rate.