How many backlinks do you have?

I'm wondering how many backlinks most of you guys have for your sites, and how long it took you to accumulate that many? Did you hire any help? What are your techniques?
Currently, I only have like 300 backlinks on one of my sites, and some of the sites that are competing for some of my keywords have over 8,000 backlinks! Then, there are some that only have 150 or so. I was gonna ask how important they are, but apparently you don't need 8,000 backlinks to get on google's first page because the site that only has 150 backlinks is number 5 on google. So are they that important or not?
I just noticed on google's guidelines it says: "Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link."
Does that mean if my navigation bar is graphical Google won't see it?
I noticed a few of you guy's have 1,000's of backlinks. Did you go and submit that many to directories, blogs, and link exchanging, or did people just naturally link to you and why?

 

One other question. Where do the majority of your links come from?

 

It's a thing about quality not quantity ...

 

Quality not quantity. Get relevant, respected and containing good anchor text.

 

Quantity Doesnt Count At All

Its From Where You Get The Back Link

 

Quality and quantity rules them all.
PR 5 and above backlinks are better.

Check my sig.

 

One of my sites (not in my sig) generated 82,000 backlinks after going viral back in '05.

 

i currently have 720 backlinks, taken me a year to get that many, i currently rank in the top 5 for most key phrases, ive just paid for another 50 links on high PR sites, im hoping these will push me furthur towards the top.

 

Does 6(six) count amongst u biggies ? Checking by link:mysite.com in google search box right?

But i am not complaining coz i did not do any seo for it.

 

It's thing about quality not quantity ...

 

I don't have many quality links yet, but at least I am learning why they say "if it was easy, everyone would be doing it!"

 

Had websites with over 20k links. Best way is to get viral content and/or a good written Press release

 

i have around 1000.. thats it..

 

If I combine all my sites, probably over 4,000

But it's not about the quantity.

A link from CNN homepage will beat 250,000 links from crap sites.

Focus on quality links, don't waste your time & money on crap links.

 

Hi, i am interested in your signature and interested on it. But why it just have PR0. If you have such a great system, why don't you use it for yourself first. I am curious about it. Thanks.

 

I think that press release is a good and high qualiyt back link build technique! But that you cound't build many quality backlink, so you should also build back link with blog、forum etc.. with low quality but quantity backlink to get google top

 

you always want high pr strong back links. You want to make sure that the site it self has strong backlinks on quality related websites. but as all the others mentioned quality is key.

 

Quality and quantity counts!! Diversity too is a major issue.

 

Most important thing in aspect of backlinking is the keyword which you use to link back to your site and the quality of the sites which are giving you back link.

 

I've seen some parasite pages with over 200,000