Give stuff Away, Get Links
The Cost of Buying Links
The cost of buying a low quality to decent quality link might be a $30 to $300 one time fee, or $20 to $200 a month. And there are a limited number of links you can buy before you start increasing your risk profile, while spending an increasing amount of time looking for worse links (all the while some of the old links are being discounted & leave a bigger footprint).
I am not saying "never buy a link" but rather that a profile that has a mixture of link sources is going to be lower cost and lower risk than a profile that consists exclusively of paid links.
What do Links Represent?
Links are a citation. A remark. Outside of the ones that are directly paid for they often represent conversations. And so to create a sustainable online business you often need more than rankings...you need people talking about you and your products or services.
If you give away a $100 or even a $500 product, the person who receives it may feel special, may give you feedback, and may talk about you on their websites. But you can get links even cheaper than that.
When you sell something it can be hard to get people to talk about it because the penny gap means that most people will never buy what you are selling. But if you can give away a free or lite version of what you sell (or some helpful add-ons) those can help pull in lots of links, exposure, and traffic. Many open source projects enjoy a PageRank 8 or 9 because they are given to so many people and so many people talk about them.
