should I buy links?!

[toprank4me]

I have been trying, quite unsuccessfully, to get some inbound links to my site. I have tried to do some research and find sites with whom I can exchange links. Most of the times I ended up realizing that such sites happen to be direct competitors. Though I went ahead and offered to swap links I hardly heard from any of them. This brings me to my questions.

Is is absolutely essential that the inbound links should be from related sites?

Does a link from an unrelated site have zero value?

Is there a way to jump start this linking process?
I am willing to part with some dollars to get atleast a few links to my site but I need to know links from what kind of sites are worth paying for.

I have a feeling I am stuck at the very first steps...any help to bail me out will be highly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

[Susanne]

toprank4me, welcome to WebmasterWorld :)

"Does a link from an unrelated site have zero value?"
No, but related is better.

Have you submitted to dmoz, goguides, joeant and gimpsy? Those are some of the most important directories. Have you also checked local directories for your state/country/city etc? Internal links also count. The bigger your site, the more pages, and each of them linking to the home page has value. Add content, as much as you can and try to expand on the existing content.
Read more about link development here at WebmasterWorld and you'll get some great ideas and valuable tips on how to work efficiently on linkpop. Cheers!

[tigger]

As Susanne said Dmoz is the best starting point, also try looking at your competitors’ backward links that should give you some other sites to contact

[toprank4me]

I did get listed in dmoz but thats about it. I will try out the other sites that susanne mentioned.

I have been reading up info in this forum and trying to implement some of the ideas. There is a question lingering in my mind though. The effort I have put in the last few weeks was essentially useless. Researching, asking for link exchange and being denied. However I am convinced that this is the way to go..as this is the collective advise of the Gurus here.

I was wondering if there was a legitimate fast track to achieving this? I mean I can spend dozens of hours doing this but time is money...and if I can pay and get this done faster wouldn't that be o.k? Have any of you tried this..I mean paying for a link? is it advisable? I have been searching for such sites . However I want to be sure I am doing the right thing and not walking into dangerous territory. Please advice.

[tigger]

>I was wondering if there was a legitimate fast track to achieving this?

Nope it's a long struggle, all you can do is set aside a couple of hours a day to build links that's what I do, but as I said earlier a faster way is to check the backward links of your competitors, in theory if they've exchanged links with one site they should exchange with you so long as you have a PR

I picked up 10 links doing that today most PR4/5s