The Guardian article "Access denied" describes the monetization of the Internet, and includes the appealing story of a homeless man who started a blog:

Jamie’s Big Voice gets readers from around the world, sometimes in their hundreds, sometimes in their thousands. He was invited to a party in Westminster where the Speaker of the House of Commons claimed to be a reader of the blog. That pleased Jamie. It could only happen now, early in the 21st century, the time when a homeless bloke with a borrowed computer can have the same reach around the world as Rupert Murdoch…

The size of Jamie’s audience depends on who has linked to him. And blogging is all about links, a line of code that turns a piece of information into a destination, a refutation, a rebuttal, a recommendation.

You promote your content by linking, and by having others linking to you. Linking how ever is not a quid quo pro affair. You link, because linking provides value to your audience, and others link to you because you provide value to their audiences.

Effective linking demands that you develop a new mindset. You link, to share, and to build, not to provide exposure for your content – the exposure happens naturally.