The Internet is a complex collection of sites, and links play a major role in determining which sites are rated highly by search engines and which are not.
This is why many businesses engage in buying and selling links, but doing so without reciprocal link manager software is a lot like trying to run a brick and mortar business without ledgers. Simply put, every business needs to know what it is buying and selling.
Unfortunately, the business of exchanging links is far more complex than the simple transaction of goods or services. The Internet is a dynamic environment at best, and a link purchased today could be gone next week. This is why everyone who buys links needs an intelligent reciprocal link manager software package capable of constantly monitoring incoming links. Of course, the opposite is also true: anyone that makes outbound links also needs to use an intelligent reciprocal link manager software package to understand what their linking efforts are actually doing.
Understanding why outbound links need to be monitored requires understanding two things: how search engines view links and why people buy links. Search engines essentially consider links to be akin to votes. If Site A links to Site B and Site B links to Site A, then they are considered to be of equal popularity if all other factors are equal. If Site C only links to Site A, then Site A has suddenly become more popular, and thus will earn a higher place on the results page of any search engine. Search engines are obviously more complex to this, and try to evaluate relative authority of sties by looking at keywords and anchor text used in links. Any reciprocal link manager that fails to look at the anchor text in links is almost useless for this reason.
People that buy links do so in an attempt to influence the ratings that their site gets by search engines, typically in regards to specific keywords. This means that anyone selling links will be subjugating their site or sites to other sites in terms of relatively popularity and/or authority. If the other site disappears, removing the link after a set period of time can help manage the amount of authority/popularity a site is leaking without effect. This practice ensures that as many sites as possible can benefit from the relative authority/popularity of a site selling backlinks.
In short, a reciprocal link manager software suite is exactly what anyone buying or selling links needs. Those buying or managing incoming links can see who is linking to them and whether or not the links are of reasonable value. Those selling or otherwise making outbound links can benefit by knowing which outbound links are ‘leaking’ relative authority and/or popularity without any purpose. After all, authority and popularity in this particular sense are in finite supply. Either way, randomly buying or selling links without managing them is an unwise proposition by any measure.