Sort of ( I suspect).
Exactly!
But when you stand out from the liars because what you're selling is what they want to buy (even if they don't need it) you're doing Google a favour. When you say you're selling cars to the guy looking for cars, but you're really selling bread - you're gaming the guy - in the long-shot hope he'll buy bread instead of a car. You game him, you're then gaming Google. When your conversion rates are high - Google is delivering "relevant" search results - therefore you cannot be gaming the system.
[You all probably know all this stuff - but for the sake of discussion....]
As to the colour of a "hat"...
You can do
some White Hat... but the products/services that you can do it for are few and far between - depending on how much time you have.
If something is unknown - and you have no "known" "hook" to hang it off - then volume and illusion are required for fast results (all the best cons are big, and have been around for a long time - that's why they work).
When you have to promote something that doesn't have a unique name (sliced bread) then Gray hat is like annoying radio or television ads and letterbox bombing - it bangs a name into the audiences head. It's annoying, but it's not illegal/illegitimate.
That way you can then use White/Gray hat to rank - because people associate Buttercup with sliced bread - and you can own the Buttercup search results with a few advertising dollars.
White hat winning for more than one product is a bit harder - here's a
theoretical possibility (bear in mind I have to modify, slightly, actual examples to protect my own work)
Eg. Eric Van Doobie is an unusual name - so it can become a brand fairly easily.
(note I'm not talking about "what" Eric Van Doobie does - just the name). That's where (I believe) time becomes a factor (let's say it's part of Google's "providence" factor)
Say Eric Van Doobie posts on a mailing lists about, um, restoring camper vans - and he has a little signature that never changes "Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King". He also has a gmail account "Eric.Van.Doobie.CamperVan.King@gmail" - which gives him a Google+ account - and he has his LinkedIn basic account (with fuck all details). Now Google Groups, gmane and Yahoo groups (and various other list mirrors/parasites) repost those posts. If Eric sits just slightly ahead of events he can answer peoples questions on the Van Restoring list because he actually does know about restoring camper vans - otherwise he simply searching Google for an answer (it's what many of those people do - most of the posters don't know how to search). He doesn't post a lot - maybe an hour a day, five days a week.
Over and over people will post the same fucking question because they're too dumb to search or read, (and/or lazy). So every now and then Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King" answers a post with a link to one of his previous posts.... and every now and then some else does the same thing - or quotes him in a blog. All of Eric's posts are more than a few lines. Think of the posts as sales pitches - and references to them (including thank yous) as conversions. Spam posts are ignored by other posters (don't become viewed as "conversations") - and have a similar search relevance value as trying to pitch Ferraris to bums.
And occasionally Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King, posts some of the more common answers to questions in his Google+ feed.... which is good, especially if occasionally he points people at it in his posts, and really good if others point to it.
And when he builds a CamperVan site he puts his name, and email in the footer of every page. The links between his sites and his other "work" is like a mutual admiration society.
Eric is also pretty quick to spot a trend - and when a new movie star is considered hot he pays to have a theme created with a picture of her looking slutty in a restored camper van, and he puts it up on Mozilla as a free theme. In his developer profile he has a discrete link to his site, and of course, he uses his classic signature. "Eric Doobie - CamperVan King".
Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King is now a brand. And he's mastered reality - because he's no longer someone who says he's the CamperVan King. He is.
His
name has rank (and Weight), and it never get penalised (his juice is major).
Still all "White Hat" - slow to build, but never fades, just gets stronger (most of those backlinks won't vanish, maybe archived, but they still accrue in value). Doesn't matter that Eric did all this just to get weight - everything he did has value. That's not gaming the system any-more than doing charity work using your real name so people will think you give a shit what they think of you, or carrying out the garbage so you get a charity fuck (as opposed to lying and saying her you love eating her yeast, and no, you don't look like mutton dressed as lamb)
And when Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King does a promotion for the new Tracker Van... the search engines create a huge index of occurrences of the words "Tracker Van" - then they look for factors to rank that list - what's NEAR on the page comes before where that page is, and the "Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King" factor will have a major effect (leverage).
In the above example "Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King" would have ranked in the top five as a phrase with only a couple of Google+ posts, or a couple of restoring camper van posts. That's because Google has indexed it at least once, and it's unique.
But with just a few hundred restoring camper van posts (over a year, plus they are reposted by gmane etc), plus his dozen FAQ posts on Google+
and his Mozilla themes.... now "Doobie" or "CamperVan" alone will relate to "Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King". And any searched term NEAR (close on the page) to Eric Van Doobie - CamperVan King will have very high ranking.
That's ranking in the preliminary list - not the end results list. The last twenty or so of Google's factor in their ranking algorithm are penalty ones - and they're dependant on situation. eg if it's a website - page speed, pictures, tags with the pictures, accessibility, internal links, site map, legal code, content. etc. They also have another index they refer to that final ranking - that include previous penalties, duplicated content sites, sort of a blacklist (not all their bots declare themselves as bots - they now spot a lot of the "morphing" sites).
NOTE: I know bugger all about Affiliate Marketing - but I've been scoring first page results for websites and companies for a long time. And no, I'm not looking for (or taking) SEO work. It's part of what I do for clients - and I've got enough of those.
Nothing personal Eric - I've enjoyed your posts (and learned a lot) you just made the comments that motivated me to try and express what I do to rank clients sites. I only do White Hat - because it's what I know. Black Hat is another field.
There is such a thing as White Hat - it does work, but it's not always appropriate. Nor are things real simple - if say the product is New Balance wristbands - then White Hat is a waste of time. It's better suited to products which aren't crap. If you're starting a chain of businesses that are going to shut down after a month (before the customers lynch you) you rent, and don't pay the last months rent.
Hopefully this will stimulate some interesting, and informative discussion.
It's late - I don't have time to properly proof read this.
Now I better go and carry out that garbage.... ;-p