Hi Diane
There are paid tools that will help with things such as keyword research, visitor numbers, organizing paid traffic and checking rankings, all of these can be used to boost the value of your website business.
However there are also tools that will help you automate the link building process and I think these are the tools you are asking about, as a general rule of thumb I would steer clear of these as the quality of the links they build will probably be low and against the guidelines laid out by Google.
They may work for a time but as I am sure you have read hear and on other forums many people who used short cuts in the past to get higher rankings are now seeing their businesses devastated by the changes in the search engine algorithms. The question to ask yourself is are you looking for some quick wins or a sustained long term business?
One short cut that does work and that should work for ever is to find out what your audience wants and then work out a way to give it to them.
I hope this helps
Sean