I found directory submission to free directories in appropriate category work for me, as well as forum posting and social bookmarking.
Can't help you with a black hat techinque, but for white hat with a bit of work involved (can be outsourced) I can recomment my own. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1305452
This method can work like gang busters. Maybe if you didn't see results it might have been because you didn't do it for long enough. You will need to do it everyday for at least 30 days (maybe more, maybe less). It's not a one-time fix for sure.
Blog commenting is definitely VERY effective. If you get bored with it, try hiring someone to do it for you, but it's definitely a great source of one-way links.
Hey, I would like to suggest you the followings, 1. DOFOLLOW Blog commenting, 2. Social bookmarks, 3. DOFOLLOW Article submissions 4. Deep inner page link building under HIGH PR Domains. These are really helpful methods, But needed some more hard work to archive these.........