[mpclark]

IME a lot of these people are middle men -- though it looks like it, they aren't actually offering to buy a link; they'll just add you to the list of sites willing to sell links that they hawk around to other site operators (via spam, natch)

Also, when I see prices mentioned, they tend to be in the $10-$50 range. But that could just be the tier my sites are in, I guess.

All that aside, it's an absolute no from me. Lie down with dogs, get fleas.

[skilled]

I've actually jerked a lot of them around, I don't do it much anymore as I had my fun, but you're right. A lot of them will start with extremely lowball offers. I've had one guy email me once and I played with him for a while, he went from $25 per link to around $300 over the course of 5-6 emails.

For him, the middleman, it makes no sense to start with the real offer because in his mind he is thinking, "If I go as low as possible below the baseline, I get to keep the rest.".

Yeah, it's a no from me also. I mean it would not make any sense for me to write an article like that on my site even though it is about tech. It would be like lighting a fire in my living room and asking, "What's wrong?".

[im3w1l]

So basically they have to do this manually like that because they are shut out from traditional ad networks?

[chinathrow]

No, they pay for placing do-follow links to their (or their customers) site, something you can't do with ad networks per se.