Hi there,

I think the approach is good, be careful not to clutter your homepage with links though, I would personally recommend you limit them to about 25 links. If you manage to get 25 strong pr5 links then that will really improve your SERP and traffic, no doubt.

As for contacting webmasters, I would probably do it via the e-mail route but ensure you personalise each e-mail otherwise people will think of it as spam and won't give you a seconds notice. Try and convince them of the positives of exchanging with your site, perhaps in bullet point form?