How did you manage so many backlinks

Good, quality content that people are naturally going to want to link to. News sites with breaking news, for example, will often have individual articles syndicated throughout the web like wildfire.

If you have continually updating content, adding an RSS feed is a must.

Yes, use Google Webmaster tools and be patient. Google does not show ALL back links that it actually counts.

Be sure to check your Yahoo backlinks as well.

Yeah I actually like to look at my Yahoo backlinks count to see a more accurate count of all my backlinks. Google either doesn't show all of them thru their basic link: function, or they are very slow to update. The google webmaster tools is updated more frequently and is allegedly comprehensive, but it still doesn't pick up as many as Yahoo picks up for my site.