[MrX]

Hi Greenguy and everyone else, I've been looking around the forum today and it seems like a nice, helpful, calm place to hang out.

My name is Jay and I've been building websites for about 4-5 months. I've only done adult sites. The learning curve is really steep for someone without prior html/css/wordpress/internet knowledge or marketing or SEO experience, but I'm making progress.

I have two questions, and would really appreciate any help with either or both.

1. First, in your view and experience, to what extent can reciprocal link trades with link list sites improve search engine position? I've been feeling lately, partly based on things I've heard, that trading with sites similar to your own (ideally) SEO-optimized free sites might be more beneficial. The idea is that more link juice and authority flow to you through a link from a site having a higher ratio of [PR and inbound links] to [number of outbound links], and greater text/content relative to links/html, etc...

Like I said, I'm new to all this. I'm puzzling over SEO questions like this recently, as I've tried and failed to make any kind of money from TGP submissions. Maybe one conversion per 100,000 traffic.

2. My second question is simpler, and it's mostly for the proprietor here.
Greenguy, I've seen you don't allow submissions to your lists without someone receiving prior approval from you based on ten previous free sites. That seems like a lot of sites to me. Maybe my mode of operating differs from the norm - I put a lot of time into building up content, then promoting and doing extensive SEO work - but I only have 3-4 sites and ~4 blogs of varying quality to shows for 4-5 months of literally continuous work. (A lot or most of this was spent learning, but I've built a lot too)

I may need to change how I do things very soon if my SEO doesn't have the intended effect, but this has been my model for several months, to obtain substantial SE traffic to 2-3 sites by ranking highly for competitive keywords.

Sorry this was so lengthy. Just had those two questions which I hoped one or more of you seemingly very friendly folks could help me with.

Thanks so much for having me here.
Best regards,
Jay

*edit - Just to clarify Question 2, which reads more like a rambling complaint than a question, I'd like to add I'm not asking for special treatment or any circumvention of your rules. Let's focus on question 1 for now, and if I decide these link lists can help me with SEO I'll cook up a few smaller free sites to satisfy Greenguy's requirement.