The search engines love links; they are seen as a vote from one site to another and as such can be difficult to get if you are new to on-line marketing.

In general you need to offer something of value to the site you wish to get a link from. This can be information which is hard to get elsewhere, tools that can be used by visitors to their site, discounts on your services or anything else with a perceived value.

You should avoid building links too quickly as this can harm your rankings in the search engines. You should also avoid companies offering to build hundreds or thousands of links for you for just a few dollars as they use automated spam that can also harm your position in the search engines.

If you get the right links from the right sites, formatted in the right way, you do not need thousands. Quality is more important than quantity.