I used to wonder why I would use outbound links from my blog (unless the people were very good friends) and how that would help me.

Now I know why and how I benefit, it really is quite simple once you understand it.

Once you have written your blog and before you post it, go over it and select a few relevant keywords that suit your blog.  What you do next is take those keywords and head to one of the major search engines and perform searches on those keywords.  

Check out the top few sites that come up for that search in the organic listings and them hyperlink your blog post to that site. Why? I hear you ask, pretty simple really. The search engines have already given that site a high ranking in there natural or organic listing, which means the search engines like that site and will visit it regularly, when the search engine robots or spiders pass through your site, they will see that your site has links to these high ranking sites, your site will then be rewarded for this link, of course the more you have the better it will be.

You in turn will be ranked higher u the natural listing and other sites will then begin to link with you.