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Mr. Thomas is correct - BMR was no better than any other article marketing service. They didn't do spun content, but they let anything through the review process. They also had extremely poor support for creating an article with any type of media or custom styles -- they set themselves up for disaster. And their special 100-word  blog post service was by definition a grave SEO mistake. I canceled my membership six months before they bit the dust because they ignored my suggestions to fix these simple items. To add, I also would not call this a private network. Anyone with $67 could get into the network. That isn't very private is it? So is article marketing dead? No. You just have to focus more on guest posting unique content and participating in networks that require quality content. Even Unique Article Wizard was hit but isn't completely dead. They still practice spun content though, so I'd suppose it's not exactly still a long term solution (although they got through panda just fine) The owner of One Hour Backlinks made a comment a few days back about his service, recommending it as a supplement to your link building campaign. Maybe commenting on auto-approve blogs worked for him, but I'd strongly recommend staying away from this. SEO is quickly becoming synonymous with marketing, building PR, and networking. Rand did a post on this not too long ago I believe.

Exact match domains are definitely still worth it.  Check out this case study on a couple thousand sites, which shows that exact match domains suffered LESS from Penguin than other sites: http://www.jonathanleger.com/anchor-text-optimization-how-much-is-too-much/ Penguin tends penalize sites that spam anchor text exact keywords, instead of a more natural link profile that includes your branded keywords.  However, when your brand IS your keywords, then it's very hard for Google to penalize you.