We hope there is no confusion on your part about the need for off-page SEO which means backlinking. You should proceed with a healthy amount of caution with backlinking if you do not have a solid grounding in it. However the right knowledge along with a dedicated approach can pay off very well. You can go about this process in any number of ways because so many people are always testing new methods.
Thinking out of the box here, the mighty and always popular contest can actually give you backlinks. People must link to your site, and then you can choose a single winner or the top three, etc. This can work well if you make the prize good enough, but maybe figure out a way to entice people who play to keep your link up. There are so many different kinds of prizes you can use, so just test them out and see what people would like. Buy Backlinks is one of those topics that is important to so many people, and the reasons are personal and varied. Rather than interject our own personal opinion on these matters, it is best to let you be the judge. That is really in your best interest only because you know your situation better than anybody else. We tend to believe a firm foundation with a broad base is effective. If you can achieve that, then that is good; but in the end you have to accomplish what you can. Just pick the most relevant areas and concentrate on them, at first. When you do locate what is meaningful to you, then obviously you will be compelled to focus on that. Let’s not forget about using article marketing for building your backlinks, but you need to know the rules have changed a bit with this. If you want to use article marketing, then be proactive about it and seek to get syndicated as much as you can. There are many such popular and not-so-popular article directories on the Internet that will allow you to add articles along with your resource box. When you use these sites, all you want to do is have another webmaster choose your article for publication. As always, you never want to produce low quality articles or content.
Another approach for high quality backlinks involves doing a little JV with those sites from whom you want a link. Then you of course must do your research to find qualified sites to ask. Take a look at their site and then think of anything you can do well that they may want or need. There is a point at which almost everyone will respond to a good deal, so with that in mind you know what to do. This also allows you to build a relationship with other webmasters/bloggers within your niche, which can be helpful in other ways in the long run.
Sure, a lot of this takes time, but that is just what must be done unless you hire freelancers. It can be boring, but it is really easy work and you can do it fast.
Keep in mind that others are working on the same thing, so you just need to be smarter about it. Just remember to do all of the SEO which means backlinks plus the on-page SEO.