Well in my category most websites that are competitive with me have TONS, i mean TONS of content. Probably take me a decade to surpass the actual content field.

However if i get enough inbound links, would that be enough to register me high enough on search engines? Also do inbound links such as forum signatures, yahoo question answers, and other type of situations also count as a inbound "link."

Those kind of links are not as valuable as real backlinks.. instead of wasting time on Yahoo and forums, work on content for your website. That's the only way it will end up ranking higher.
The amount of content is definitely important unless you have everything the user might be looking for on just one page.
Give it some time, have fun working on your website and forget about rankings. Once your site is good enough it will start ranking without you having to worry about backlinks etc.

hi,
well to tell you the truth links like those don't help in ranking, but they sure do send traffic not much but 30 or 40 extra visitors won't hurt you

__________________
check out my Blog Marketing Tips Series , "Part 9" Other Forms Of Content

A Guide To Egypt Learn about the Egyptian Climate and more!