I don't know where to start

Hey everyone. I just registered for this site today, and I'm just beginning my "trek" through seo and the many methods involved. I've heard it mentioned before that seo is pretty much, generally speaking, half keywords and half links. Keywords seem easy enough, and the concept makes sense. However, I'm trying to learn more about links and how to acquire more.

I've read about the concept of automatic link building and looked into such software as scrapebox and zennoposter. Just a couple of questions:

1) How exactly does this software work? Do I round up a bunch of different sites catering to my market and send out links to each one or does it work differently?

2) What kind of risks are involved, especially if it's a new site only about two weeks old?

3) How effective is such a method? Is it pretty much overnight success in rankings?

Thanks all.

Brandon

Linking software sends either a link or (preferably) some content with embedded links to particular platforms. It's hard to explain in detail in a reply like this. It's not that hard really.
Sensible linking to decent sites to a level that's appropriate for your content age and quantity. There's a lot of talk about link velocity. For micro sites this means nothing really. For larger sites with many URL's and constant updates it's a very important concept. So the answer to this depends on your sites age, the amount of content it has (make sure it's unique for anything other than micro sites as well)
No - It's rare anyone will get overnight success. Sometimes you will find a niche that is relatively free of competition, but most commercial terms are being hunted and processed by many thousands of IM and SEO guys the world over. You might get lucky..but 9 times out of 10 you will need to work hard, produce content, create links and be patient.

Don't buy into any "magic bullet" solution crap. either.
Work out how SEO works.
Do it all manually to begin with
When you understand it, get tools or ouotsource the stuff that's taking you a lot of time

Make money.

Scritty

There really is no "overnight ranking." It all depends on how much work you wanna put into it. The more time and effort, the better your results. Same goes for risk. The less time you put in by using automated software, the more risk you take on of being penalized or sandboxed. In any case, it's not a matter of days but months.

Scrapebox is the end all be all, but you'll have to learn to use it, and it's not easy. It won't do all the work for you, it'll just put you in the driver seat.