Well if you're looking at setting up a link list you want to design one with a focus on getting ranked well with search engines imho. The amount of traffic you actually get coming in from the buttons/links on other peoples sites is fairly small in comparison to what your own link list site pages on the se's can pull in so text/links are important in that regard.
Greenguy has a board, where you might get better answers to your questions:
http://www.greenguyandjim.com/