It depends on the type of site to be honest. You said yourself there wasn't much there for your site so you know what you'd like to link exchange with, correct? I mean you can indiscriminately linked to anything if all you are looking for is inbound links but at the same time you take away from your site when you do.
I don't think it really matters as far as search engines are concerned. They(search engines) say so but I haven't seen an appreciable difference in what/who gives sites inbound or outbound links as far as attaining page rank or search engine placement. I don't think the bigger ones police that sort of thing at all anymore regardless of their claims. They have bigger fish to catch in the form of revenues from advertising. I haven't seen a google dance in months if that's any indication.
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