with the help of any analysis tool like LRT,SEOMoz,MajesticSEO get the backlink details of your competitors site and analyze them. from there you can definitely start the link building process beginning with blog commenting.

You don't always need to think of the other guys as competitors. Think of them as role models and look at what they're doing right, as schgrv said.

Moreover, take your niche and make it apply to people.

If its about safe sex, you can post an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit, or answer people's questions in related areas of Yahoo questions (or yahoo asks, or whatever its calling itself these days), or on mens or womens health forums which have sexual intercourse sub-forums.

On busy populated places you can establish yourself as a regular contributor, which lends credibility, and that makes you interesting. Combine that with a link in your signature and you'll draw some attention...

I would recommend manually creating links and possibly purchasing High PR blog posts from people here in the Warriors for Hire section

Start with quality. Look for guestposting opportunities within your niche (MyBlogGuest.com is a good place to start). Buy high PR blog posts from established providers with a history of providing excellent products. I've found that once I lay a solid foundation down, the rest becomes much easier.

Well first of all make sure your onsite SEO is perfect. Secondly create social profiles on the big main platforms (fb, twitter, pinterest, youtube), they will be your first links. Second links are bookmarking your Youtube videos. Think of it like building a house. You have to lay the foundations before you add the master bedroom. So why in the world would you opt for purchasing a "High PR blog post" before you have a completed Facebook page. Be smart, don't chase PR and 1000s of links. PM me if you need a hand.

Before you build some backlinks on your own, try to take a look at the backlinks of your top competitors with some spy tools. The tools that I might recommend are Backlink Snatcher, Majestic SEO and SEOMoz.

Yeah, getting links from popular places is easier said than done. I normally decide on a per-link basis, because no website is the same and you'd need to sit down and think about pretty much each link (unless you can afford to get your site penalized).

Then you may want to do link bait, link outreach (there's a fun infographic on how to write great outreach emails http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/outr...ctographic.htm, event sponsoring, guest blogging, paid directory listing, etc. etc. It really depends.

I personally do look where my competition takes links from (there are tons of backlinks checkers for that). I'd also recommend using http://webmeup.com/tools/backlinks.html, it's free and gives out quite a lot of data, more you'd expect from free software.

Build links manually because in this way you know where you put your links on. Remember that in the post panda-penguin era, quality of links is greater than quantity so focus on building quality links only. I suggest you start choosing keywords you can rank for then plan your SEO campaign. You may focus on building links through guest posting, blog commenting, forums, and promoting in social media sites.

I suggest you look into this free lesson on affiliate marketing here so you'll have a clearer idea on what you need to do and establish for your website: Affiliate Marketing Lessons | Affilorama