Automation, where possible. But look for free avenues to get links instead of buying packages. See my sig for a a free link blast That asides, look to free directories and try to get your friends to link to your site.
writing good content is the best angle for a budget - automation is a good one, but spammy and not long term ideal - guest blog commenting is free and gets you on good/ relevant sites providing your comment adds value - dont just go with - great post! start with blog comments - add them yourself, to each site - one at a time. Good luck
Agree with all except automating. Automating is good for short term I guess, but everyone (I hope is looking for long term). I've never been a fan of automating anything. If you're on a budget, then writing the content yourself and building backlinks is always going to be free, money wise. The only investment will be your time and energy to come up with quality content. But, depending on your budget, you may find some services that will build the links for you, just be careful that they don't use software to blast 1,000 backlinks in a day or something crazy like that. If that happens, chances are your site can become suspicious in Google's eyes.
Best Link Building budget must include Article Submission Forum Posting Directory Submission Social Bookmarking and if possible link exchange No matter, how much budget you have for seo try to include all these things doesn't matter if they are in small quantity.All of them are necessary for seo/link building process. Though your site may take more time due to short of money, but continuous effort will definitely help in ranking.
Suggest use article submission and guest blogging, both of them in low budget. However, it is time consume
Personally I like link building through forum. Because forum signature link can be accumulate and develop personal reputation, with good personal reputation, it stand a better chance to attract readership and traffic.
I would say article writing and blogging are the best ways to build links on a budget. Directory submissions and social bookmarking help out a lot as well.
Article writing is good but it requires a lot of effort and too much pain, you can get the same benefits by doing even a less amount of work if you do guest blogging. Really worth the effort which is very less by the way when you compare it to article writing.
if I were you I would look to hire someone for cheap dollars for a few hours per week to search for qualitative blogs in your nighe with alot of posts so you can comment on them
There are so many options out there: Blogging, social bookmarking, Press Release, article writing and many more.
You will find every steps of SEO is free, such as social bookmarking, article submit, back link. Directory submit, etc.
You can do some article writing, forum posting and social bookmarks. Also, use the likes of Squidoo, hubpages and blooger for backlinks