Hi Joel,

I used to spend a ton of time on the Warrior forum.  Every once in a while there is a worthwhile discussion, but mostly people are looking to sell their products.  When I first became interested in SEO, I even bought a few of their guides.  And while they were not completely useless, most of them didn't tell me anything that I could not have learned for free on a blog.

I personally would not pay for being a member of the Warrior Forum.  In the Post-Penguin world, many of the tactics expoused there are not only useless, but can be detrimental to the health of your websites.  Maybe I am painting with too broad a brush, but there it is.

Dude,

The best way to get links is to earn them.

Paid links are against Google's policies, and could get you banned.  Don't buy links.

And before you even start thinking about buying links, make sure that your site is worthy of being linked to.  Then check out this blog post:http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies  And buy this book: www.linkbuildingbook.com.

Unfortunately getting links is not easy, but don't go down the dark road of link buying...no good can come of it.

Good Luck!

Hi Jason,

Tip No.1 never buy a tool if you don't have time to review the instructions.

Honestly, I got the free version of this software when I was first starting out in SEO, and I found it very cumbersome.  Additionally, it needs frequent updates, and on many occassions you are asked to pay for those updates.  It was because this tool did not give me what I needed that I sought out SEOmoz, Ontolo, Majestic SEO and others.

It may have improved since then, but most of the reviews on Cnet have been mixed:

http://download.cnet.com/SEO-PowerSuite-Professional/3000-18485_4-10920496.html

www.knowem.com is a username checker.  Their list is very extensive, but as Ben points out, I wouldn't suggest making submissions en masse.  I hope that helps!

Well, you should always try to get a mix of branded and unbranded links.  If you can get links to inner pages, that will also be helpful in helping build authority.

Use the tool Screaming Frog to see all your pages, that should help.  Also, the SEOmoz toolset has a function that will show you all duplicate content (if you are a pro subscriber).

Directories like this can help, but they are very expensive (the Yahoo link cost $299 the last time I checked).  I stand by my advice.  Do something awesome on your site before you ask anyone lese to link to it.  
And make sure that the websites you target for link acquisition are relevant to your site.  In the example you gave, construction sites would be relevant.  But not blogs about travel.  Does that make sense?