Link negotiation is weird. Not hard, not easy—just… annoying, when folks come in hot like they’re buying a car and everything’s a haggle. You send a simple pitch, maybe asking for a guest post swap or a backlink mention, and they’re like: how about you pay me $500 and also write ten custom tweets? Madness. What works is when there's real overlap—shared audiences, empathy, some niche camaraderie. You build rapport slowly, or fast, but genuinely. People like people, not templates. That’s what becomes clear real quick digging through https://andrewlinksmith.com and clicking around like you're lost, but also kinda entertained.