Is link popularity so important to generate revenue?
As you may know most of the major search engines are taking the website populairty (Link Popularity) into their relevancy algorithms. Quality content and useful services can help you as well. A direct result of this is increasing the number of quality, relevant sites which link to your site.
This can actually improve your search engine rankings.
Good search engine rankings = More quality traffic to your site = Increase the chance to make sells
Don’t try to get this links too fast, because this will turn over you. Sites that are receiving too many backlinks in too short time will be taken into a sandbox.
If you have a new site make maximum 20 links per week in your first 2 months. With 50 links if you are in a niche market i can guarantee that you will receive after 2 months a minimum of 30-50 unique visitors from search engines and from other referals.
Also is important the quaity of the link. Try placing you link in sites that are relevant to you content. A relevant link is more important then 20 irrelevant links.