Garrett trust me you are doing it right and especially for the client end I don’t really see any need of it. The most they can deliver you is some extra amount of traffic (with the bounce rate of 90% and plus) as far as the link equity from social bookmarking is concern, it’s more like directories.
The reason why they are shocked is because they have no idea how to ACTUALLY build quality links so they keep workin on shit that are not important at all in my opinion.