Content is the backbone to most organic link building campaigns. Those that are in SEO, like I was, are going to quickly find unique quality content to be priceless really. Instead of spending all of your time submitting to directories and forums, where you get cheap links, you should be writing quality content for your site. Then you can work on integrating social share buttons and things of that nature in order to build the community that is your website visitors. Google has penalized so many sites these days that have cookie cutter content. It really is sad to see.
You do need unique content, but cheap is one thing you do not need. Bad content is worse than no content at all. So bite the bullet and pay a little more to get solid content for your site. It pays off as SEO currency.