Yeah, all the good stuff and diversity in links is what you need but also, if you want to out-rank your competitors, you need quantity. A real example. I had this PR1 site. I built another site with several thousands of pages on a different domain and put links back to my PR1 site on 600 pages (mind this point: sitewide links could get me banned). Not only I got PR2 on the next update but I also hopped 80 positions up in Google and landed a neat top-10 with both Yahoo and MSN. So, for me, diversity means all the traditional stuff (squidoo, directories, articles, etc, etc) + my own quantity links. So, to answer your question, yes, quantity matters - just keep away from farms and schemes!!! By the way, don't believe those who say that you need loads of money to build large sites quickly. Gimme a PM if you want to know more.