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I want to say that I 100% agree with Ryan, but I will play devil's advocate. There is a time and place for everything, including black hat SEO.  If your goals are well-aligned with short term success, then black hat SEO is probably the cheapest and most effective option you have.  To me, link building isn't an ethical consideration, but a business decision.  If black hat tactics fit my goals, or my clients' goals, and everybody is aware of the risk involved and all of the options at play, then why not? There's no doubt about it - these are paid links, and as Ryan said, they will eventually be addressed by Google's Webspam team, and when that happens, you're going to lose a large share of your link portfolio (at best) or receive a penalty (at worst).  But there is no Matt Cutts fairy that haunts black hatters at night, preying on them as they dream of paid links and content farms.  It's economics, plain and simple.  I don't know what industry you are in or what your exact situation is, so it would be presumptuous of me to completely rule out black hat SEO strategies. That said, I've yet to encounter a situation where I've needed to resort to black hat tactics, for personal projects or client work.  Just sayin...