Copyblogger has piece on links and the sandbox for new blogs in Google.
The sandbox is often misconstrued (I’m sure Brian understands this correctly however) as a delay on newly registered domains. Its not, its a delay on the power of links to a site. That’s why its so important for new bloggers to get links before they can rank well in the search engines and garner traffic independant of its upstream sites. For SEO purposes a link is a seed that can be leveraged into greater traffic.
So you’ll need authority sites and in-content links. The most authority blogs and sites are probably not going to be participating in sponsored post type offers, so you’ll have to get more creative. A press release can help but the core of the story has to be strong to actually get authority links.
Its all about useful information, words you can use to do stuff. Like the old saying goes, everyone has an opinion, but not everyone can teach you to do something. Content is dead and resource is king.
Hack, tool, or how to, its has to be a platform. Simple and flexible.
And sexy.
You have to give the people what they want. Every blogger wants more traffic. Most people want more money. Or love, or convienance. If you teach them how to get what they want, you’ve gained a reader. And probably links, lots of them.