No doubt, buying links is a risky move. The real problem is not that crappy sites have to resort to link buying - it's that good sites need exposure so that people know they exist. You can create all the quality content you want, but if no one knows about you, it can be a long journey. That is the only justification I can see for buying a link (to kickstart your site).
Of course, you can do a lot of things to get links. However, it takes time to do that. For example, forum posting, blog commenting, etc.. and it takes a lot of time to do that. Buy links is easy. My company is doing text link brokering. We are textlinksdepot dot com. We see result from the consumers. However, some suggestions: 1. do it slowly. Don't have 100 backlinks on day one. 2. link exchange and buy links works. Link exchange takes more time because you need to do all the leg work. Buy links from link broker is faster and easy but it costs money. 3. backlinks is not the only solution. You need to do more. For example, you need to "tune" your website. 4. anchor text for the backlinks is very important. Do some research on your keywords before you buy link. 5. backlinks take time (from couple week to couple months). Don't hope that it will work on day 1. hope this help. 8) textlinksdepot.com