Well it does for some people, but why bother? There are plenty of other methods to get backlinks

True, i'm just thinking relevant links

I get a few of these emails every week for one of my sites. I'm sorry to say that they just go straight in the bin. It's possible though that there are kinder webmasters than me

Like cold calling, etc. it's a number game.

I have had success emailing webmasters that link to a **** about.com article and asking them to link to mine instead.

Get creative but always consider, what's in it for the other person?

most of the time webmasters agree to link to you when your website quality is good or tightly relevant to their topic.

I use it effectively for several shooting-related sites I run. I could care less about link juice for these, but it's been great for that, too.

My goal is to get my site linked where my target audience is - and that's on sites with lots of rich content. My own site is very content-rich as well, which has a lot to do with it - it's not going to work if you're running a thin Adsense site or something.

Asking for backlinks is good. While waiting for the webmaster's reply, you can build links for a mean time to help your site.

Don't bother asking another site for a backlink, unless you already have a backlink to them on your own site.

I would go as far as waiting for Google to cache the backlink on your own site before asking another site to link to you.

Don't ask them for a favor If you can't do the same, first (without being asked).

I my experience, the "cold calling" link building method works about 1 percent of the time, meaning ask 100 webmasters and you maybe end up with about 1 link. However I've been able to improve that rate for some campaigns by sending a unique, well written article for them to post to their site in exchange for the link, that seems to get attention more than just "hey you wanna link to my site?"

I think there are more efficient ways to build your links. I know for me personally, I get so many emails and have so many email accounts I don't normally even finish reading link request emails.