What IM'ers Need ?

Because you don't.

You can get thousands of links without any tools.

Sure you can save some time, but you don't NEED tools.

I have several hundred websites and I do SEM for clients and I could quite happily get great results without even having a single tool on any of my computers.

Most of the 'tools' you see IMers buying are scripts that only people without a decent marketing strategy would buy.

If you have no clue about how to market your website and you're desperate - you'll try anything. In that case any tool would seem like it's worth trying. Like spamming people's blogs with trash comments, or hacking people's server logs for referral links etc. Desperate people will give anything a go.

The only tools I find really useful are the ones that speed up the process of things I would do anyway - such as uploading videos to multiple sites. I could say tools such as that for most things, but many of the 'free' sites that you can submit to are a waste of time, so it's usually only the paid sites that are worth bothering with in a lot of cases.

The other thing is that most tools go out of date or stop working, so I think if you do need things like this it's better to use services that keep their systems updated and move with the times rather than pay a one-time fee for a script that gives the creator no incentive to keep working on it.

Perhaps you should ask for them in the SEO forum instead, since clearly the only people replying to you here are telling you that they don't need no stinking tools.

Oh, and add me to that list. None of the "tools" you're discussing are worth the time and trouble it takes to download them. Quality content, frequently updated. End of story. SEO be damned.