Do it like we did it, build your site and donate stuff to other sites and get to know webmasters on other similar sites and exchange links on each others sites. FK didn't get listed in a search engine for its first 6 months, ie May 2000. Beg, borrow, steal, donate, charm, help, to exchange links and don't pay a cent! Also look where the banners on other similar sites are being served from and then go and see where they are ranked *burstnet has a ranking for sites that use their banners*. This helps to give you an idea of their size and hence the amount of sucking up you will need to do to get a link exchanged

Also hitbox and a few other counters have rankings too, good info to be found there too.