How important is press release?

The point of a press release isn't to bring incoming links; it's to convince media outlets to pick up on your news for a story. If you're looking at it as nothing more than a link-building tool, then yes, you're better off spending your money on guaranteed traffic or something, rather than trying to use a tool for something it's not designed for. The point though is that if you spend $50 on a release (and in reality, if that's all your spending, you're not going to get great results, but the best way is manual submission which is much more expensive), it becomes enormously more worthwhile than buying traffic, because one media outlet publishing a story about you can reach hundreds of thousands of people. But if you can't reach the correct media contacts, don't know how to convince them that your story is newsworthy, or don't make yourself available to them and really push your pitch on them, press releases probably aren't the best tool for you anyway.

Jenn