is this a good idea or a bad idea?

i have about 300,000 pages indexed on google

now the other 5 or so top sites in my niche category i wanna get some incoming links too to big up my pr

so what im doing is emailing them offering them a text link at the bottom of all my pages to there home page in return for the same from them

is this a good idea or a bad idea?

thanks in advance

i know of a few sites that do this, i dont see the downside at all

Peace

Some people view a footer link (on all pages) as being less valuable than a homepage link.

Just my personal experience.