Fregie really thats the only answer. Manual link exchanges with reliable and respected partners is the only way to go.
I held out for a long time and didn’t like automated link exchanges in the beginning. The ONLY reason I went automated at about 20 of my newer sites was I felt guilty for not responding faster to webmasters who were requesting link exchanges. With hundreds of sites to maintain I cant process manual requests in an expediant manner. I had really hoped that through automation I could get around that logistics problem.
And in fairness to Links Manager if people were not so damned dishonest their system would have been a perfect fit for my needs.
Oh well, leave it to people to mess up a generally good thing by abusing peoples trust.