Linking 1 for 1 or X dollars for them to us?

Which is better? If any?

[sincraft]

I've been reading, searching, absorbing and learning. :) Lately though, I have been wondering, what is the purpose of linking.
The problem we have is, we are a Ecommerce site, not an information site. As sellers of 'intimate appearal' we don't have much content would can place on our site to help us out. I did come up with the idea to produce newsletters ladden with our keywords etc + products name and 'reviews' on the products, with a link on the page to 'past newsletters' so that 1. this will keep the page 'fresh' and 2. this will allow the spiders to crawl and see more 'good' content.

SO that brings me to my point - we recently paid to have a banner on a site that attracts many of our demographic users X amount of dollars to put a banner of ours on their website for rotation on a monthly basis and no limit on clicks.
We also joined a DIRECTORY where we place the directory logo on our site, and they list us in their listings.

WHich is better? Do any of these work? Please help me out, I am completely new to SEO and seriously considering SiteMatch so that I can see my SEO techniques refresh faster for better page ranking. But are these banners going ot help my ranking, hurt it, or keep it neutral and expect the only benefit to come from the customers that click on the banners/listings themselves?

There are many topics on this, but none that seemingly answer my questions as it seems most are directed at non ecomm sites.

Please, your timely opinions are greatly appreciated.

S

[chrisgarrett]

I would say get whatever links you can. The advice I have been given about reciprocal links is have them look as natural as possible, preferably in a paragraph of incontext content rather than on a links page or in a footer area with lots of other random links.

Not sure what you mean about not being able to create content if I understand your site topic, it seems there are lots of sites out there that like "intimate" content, particularly pictures ;O)

[artdog]

I don't see how sitematch would make any difference. I never used it and Y! spiders everyday because of links pointing to site.

[sincraft]

AH so content = pictures also? Didn't know that. HMMMM probably should rename my products from model #'s to actual names including the pictures then. HMM.

S