Backlinking strategy for a beginner?

After some intense confusion, and feeling like I have been lost for the past 4 months. I received some wisdom on these forums that has sort of set me back on the right course.

As a young newbie, I have been having immense trouble trying to take my site from a 14 article Affiloblueprint startup, to a real website with traffic. My problem may have been trying to understand the full picture, when in reality, I need to be taking this step by step. Things like list building, and opt-ins are WAY DOWN THE LINE for me.

Thanks to everyone's advice, I have set a goal in order to focus myself. broadly, it is to "get backlinks!" I haven't set a specific number because I don't want to limit myself, plus, I don't even know what a logical numerical goal would be.

Thus far I have been trying to leave links on related blogs, article websites, even a couple of forums. However, I am experiencing some issues: First of all, the forums don't seem to be supplying me with backlinks despite the fact that my website appears in my signature. Oddly enough, the only backlink I do have is, I believe, from my warrior forum signature, so I find this odd.

Secondly, Ezinearticles will not accept ANYTHING that I write. With the 7 day wait period, this is becoming a huge roadblock. I have finally narrowed it down to one error: *I can't promote my own product in the body of the article*, which, I AM NOT???? Maybe my URL is too similar to the product name itself? I can't keep waiting out these 7 day periods, just to see that I made one small error. I haven't really moved on to other article websites, because I can't even get Ezines down.

Thirdly, I am attempting to post on blogs. Problem is, most blogs don't let you post url's or have limited html. I think I managed to get a few to work, but I still haven't seen any backlinks from them. What is the issue?

I will continue to chug along at this pace and learn from my own mistakes, but I'd like it if I could get some help. Either via post, or via PM (keep in mind I can't respond to PM's yet) please help me out with a link building strategy for a beginner? I know information is considered valuable around here, but maybe you could give me a dumbed down version of your linkbuilding strategy?

Help appreciated
-Matt