So what's the best way to get my first link?

There are a number of ways to do this, very affordably. You can:

    * Ask a friend to put a link to your website,
    * Post messages in an online forum, with your site address in your signature,
    * Send a reply on a web log and include a link to your website,
    * Build your own blog on Blog.com and link to your website,
    * Open an account on a social bookmarking service like Digg and create a bookmark to your website,
    * Write a free reprint article and upload it to SearchWarp, EZineArticles, or Free-Reprint-Articles

The faster Google looks at the website where your link was placed, the faster Google will find that a page out there linked to you. Some pages are checked as seldom as once every few months, other web sites are checked several times an hour. The fastest means to get into Google are through social bookmarking or article marketing.

If you are allowed to view your website logs, sift through them for visits by an agent called GoogleBot. This is the program that Google uses to discover websites. Once you that Google has hit a few pages of your website, it doesn't take long until your site: search shows a few of your pages. Regrettably, you've seen the beginning of your journey...