Hi Mindy,
Quality Links are very important if you want your web pages to get indexed and to rank well in the major search engines. They are also a great source of targeted traffic themselves.
You should submit your URL(s) to relevant directories and resource pages, and also write & submit articles that contain your link(s) in the byline. These are a good start to getting some links pointing to your pages without going through the tedious process of exchanging links manually.