First Tier Question

Due to drops in ranking I want to create new backlinks.
I only want to create a few (like 10) first tier links (manually), but I don't know how many articles I should use for this.
My former provider used 1 original article for 10 submissions (don't know if he spun them)but I don't know that's the way to go.

Thanks

You need unique content for each property you use as tier 1. You may spin an article and generate unique versions.

Yes you need to create unique content for each site. As glencorefame said you can spin one article (well) and use that to generate the uniqueness.

It is also best practice to submit more than one post/article per site. Aim for 3 - 5 articles at least.

So the short answer is:

1. Get at 10 - 50 unique articles and post 1 - 5 on each site.
   
2. Get 1 - 5 well spun articles and use those to produce unique articles.