Unfortunately, you are a loooong way away from getting link trades with the big guys/girls. You need to build a good, clean site and you need to establish a name for yourself. Building traffic without good link exchanges is both painful and slow. Building a solid name for yourself isn't much easier. I've been at this a few years and I can think of only one link exchange that I have with a 'big' player - and I didn't go begging for it, he approached me.
This industry is a lot like Survivor. Make the right alliances and you can stay in the game a little longer. Make the wrong ones and you're fucked. I've also found it handy to call everyone 'cocksucker'. That way, when you say it out of anger and pure hatred, no one can tell.
