Before doing a classic WF newbie beat down, try to remember to address his questions, which included: Why are crappy EPN sites without content are ranking high?
Telling him to add fresh content does not answer his question. Telling him to read the PHPBAY forums is a good start, but he will get the same answer.
Could it be that the crappy sites have critical keywords in their domain names and Google is giving them the advantage (yes, I see that over and over)? Could the crappy sites simply have better SEO through titles and anchor text? Could all those crappy backlinks purchased for $25 by many EPN fellows actually work despite Google's PhD's supposedly not rewarding them?
My theory is that the guys with crappy EPN sites are succeeding through quantity, not quality. In other words they spew a bunch of crap sites without content, and a handful somehow succeed primarily because Googlebot pretty much still sucks. The poor fellows focusing on content spend weeks developing one site that might succeed, whereas the crappy EPN webmaster makes 20 in the same time and gets two or three to succeed if only by luck of the draw. He also learns more because he has vastly more data to work with and more niches to try out.
It's like fishing. You can patiently bait your hook with a worm and wait around for a fish to bite, or you can drop a grenade in the water and see what floats to the surface.