Linking - How much time should you spend on finding links?

I often spend 5 hours a day looking at link building tools, competitors, link commands in google and end up with only 10 good links. How long should I look for links? After the first or second pass, I feel like I am wasting time. So how long does everyone else take to find 10 good links?

 

5 hours a day finding 10 good links? thats almost like a full time job. then again, it all depends on what kind of links you classify as good links. if it works out at the end, then the time is well spend. but i would calculate the return of investment, in this case time spent.

 

wow - I spend an hour. I have a life - I don't have time to mess around.

To be fair about it, I do some backlinking at my work:

 

I think that you spend five hours a day to do 10 link is indeed a bit low efficiency

 

10 good links in 5 hours, I would say it's not all that bad. If you are able to find these links on good PR - TOTALLY relevant links, your time is well-spent. Each of these links would be better than 100s of links someone is making in an hour.

 

I think you waste your time.

 

You shouldn't have to look for good links.

Good links are relevant links that Google likes. If it's not found on the first few pages of Google for a specific keyword, you are wasting your time. If you find only 10 in your 5 hours of work, you need to outsource your link building as soon as possible.

I'm sure you could be spending 5 hours doing something way more productive then a few half-assed links.

 

very true indeed

 

I tend to find links during the regular routine of things. Forum monitoring, RSS feeds, reading blog posts, I don't dedicate specific time to it ;-)

 

I think you are required to change your strategy regarding link searching. You can easily find tips on the forum about how you can get good number of links in less time. you'll have to speed up your searching as you're investing your precious time.

 

5 hours a day? wat else you do in your day ?

 

I spend about 2-3 hours a day in researching links. Looking for quality links that are open for link exchanges is difficult these days. It's sooo tedious.

 

hurn1 is worng..you are not wasting your time. you know what you are acheeving some knowlage and exprience. it's better for your future. you should try your best.

 

Dude...what are you doing that it takes you 5 hours?

I use Angela's backlinks. 30 links takes me 3 hrs but I go overboard and ping each URL after the link shows, bookmark the URL, and will build a link-wheel on some of them too.

 

may be u need more efficiency. Or u can split up ur work into time frames for better efficiency. Still good job. U can do better if you have some better tools at your disposal!

 

I usually searching for the ready lists of links, so sometimes it is possible to find a lot of links within an hour.

 

In 5 hours you should be able to:
Write an article/ezine - 1
Submit to 10 quality directories - 10
Post to 3 forums - 3
Post comments on 4 blogs - 4
Make an entry in your own blog(s) 1
Post to 4 social bookmarking sites 4

That's 23 links on a conservative count

 

I'd recommend on hire someone to do build links for you or find a link building service to help you. It's not worth my time to spend hours and hours when I can hire someone else.

 

I think you are looking at this all wrong, you should not be finding links, you should be finding friends. After you make friends then the links will come.

 

I think it is better to create your own lists of top 100 article directories, web link directories, social bookmarks etc. After this it will be easy for you to build links quickly.