In Price as Signal Joel states how intermediaries want to control pricing to leverage their market positions.

now when a musician gets uppity, all the recording industry has to do is threaten to release their next single straight into the $0.99 category, which will kill it dead no matter how good it is.

Seth thinks much media is sold one price fits all because of industry tradition.

13 Tips on Asking other Bloggers for Links and Link Baiting for Fun and Profit are both link building tip posts.

Rand offers the following advice in his post:

Don’t ask for a link – bloggers hate that (even I hate it). Ask for their advice, tell them you respect their opinion and like their blog (if you don’t, find someone whose opinions you do respect) and are hoping their feedback can help you improve. 99.99% of the time, if you implement some small changes they ask for and email them back saying you’ve made them, they’ll write about it in public.

That is really the key to actually getting good links. Make people think you care about the subject and you value their opinions. Make it seem like the link is unnecessary or an afterthought. If you do that quality links flow naturally.

In the same way that price sends a signal the method or reasoning behind contacting another person helps guide how they will react to it.