Backlinking services? good or bad?

[Nostro]

I've recently been spending hours at the computer going through lists of directory websites filling out countless forms submitting my website and business information and i'm comming to terms with the fact that i literally dont have the time to be doing this...


My question is do these backlinking services where you pay set amount of money for 500-1000-etc backlinks any good? do they work?

and more importantly what are the best ones?

[JPnyc]

They're going to go spamming your link all over the web. You'll get back links but you also may damage your reputation.

[Nostro]

I was afraid people would tell me that. My site doesnt have massivly competitive keywords I think my main competition are usually comming up with page ranks of 4 so potentially if I just keep doing it myself it may not take me that long to rank well..

[JPnyc]

You should also be aware that forum administrators like myself spend most of our time trying to keep people like them out. There are ways of doing it that aren't so frowned upon such as the social networking sites and twitter etc. There are also sites that exist just for that purpose, to put ads online. Problem is, they don't stop there, they hit forums and what they do is unwelcome.