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Haha, thank you, Patrick!

Good luck with this Tim. Thanks for letting us know what you did.

Hey Tim I just stumbled over this post so it's a late answer, however, maybe worth throwing in my tuppence / five cents here. I think we are pretty much at the point with all of this that if a small business client comes to you and asks for links then they likely have a bigger problem than actually just needing a bit of a boost for a few keywords. If your client is thinking about buying links to simply do better in search then rather than just pointing them towards someone who may (or may not) do a good job the better advice would be pointing them towards a consultant who help them devise a real strategy. Buying links is not a strategy. If I think about all of the clients I have worked with this year I don't think I have thought a single time - well, what you need is just a few more links. And, often, even when someone may come to us asking for us to build links, we more often than not try to look at ways to do something bigger and better. I guess the point I am trying to make here is to ask the question - why? Why do you want links? What is the real goal? No business thinks we will make it this year if we can just get some more links so what is the real need here. It's just too much of a can of worms to look at possibles but in many cases a well placed guest post on a highly visible site may generate more exposure and qualified click through traffic than the benefit that ten links may bring. Some, stealthy placement on high ranking industry directories may help raise the profile and get more click through traffic again. Some well placed citations and local SEO may be more than enough for many a small business or local business. The possibilities are kind of endless but usually, links are not the entire answer and in many cases are not the biggest part of it. Obviously, it all depends, but the point I am making is often, if they are asking for links, and you really want to give them some help, first ask them why and then try to direct them towards someone who can help them devise a real strategy that will drive exposure, referral traffic and likely a few bang-up links as part of the process. Obviously, on the dawn of Penguin 2.0 (4.0?) having a strategy that is not built around getting more links is even more important than ever. Not an answer as such, but hopefully food for thought!  Marcus