Yeah John, blogging is a very effective way to link building. You can create huge one way back links by blogging/writing articles on various reputed web 2.0 sites.
Here is a list composed of only the best of web 2.0
article directory sites where you can develop bundles of links from them. some common examples are : squidoo, Hubpages, Bukisa, etc. (they also share revenue with your published blogs:)