Does my anchor text make a difference?

Does the anchor text from the sites linking back to mine make a difference in gainging something back.

Reason i ask is i have access to a few sites, and gain more and more every day (no not anything illegal/shady like placing links on hosting clients webpages). Most are friends pages i help a great deal out with, and i dont want a link back to my forum where people see its active, and go and sign up rather then keeping my friends busy with their own traffic.

So anyway, instead of having somehting like this for anchor text "Automotive Forums" would it be the same if i used a period at the end of a sentance for my anchor text

Tried to do a search but didnt come up with much

Anchor text makes a huge difference. Don't do the period linking to your site thing. You want the anchor text to be as desciptive & relevant as possible to the linked to page/site.

Agreed.