I don't do black hat SEO if I wanted to I could very easily... However, I don't mind using blackhat hacking techniques to get even with some rivals.
Well first i was in Blackhat . But later people said me it can ban me from Adsense . so i switched to white hat . Its slow but safer .
A lot of people have forgot what "blackhat" really is. It is using unethical means to drive web traffic to your website. That in itself isn't really bad. Now when you look at places like blackhatworld...black hat is a term used to describe outright illegal activities. Then people talk about these illegal activities and next thing you know everyone and their mother is exploiting facebook, twitter, youtube, yahoo, etc. Blackhat used to mean traffic creation, now it means screwing people out of their hard earned cash.
There are some great black-hat tools out there that can return faster profits, than by using whitehat methods. Do a little of both but be sensible is the best advice.
Blackhatting sucks ... there is no reason to resort to these kind of method while legit SEO works just fine !!!
In the long run, search engines takes black hat SEO very seriously and will penalize those who utilizes it.
You are correct, you can only really have short-term gains with black hat methods. It is not a long term strategy as most, if not all tend to get caught and the engines will penalize you.
Yes, and one more thing to have in mind when it comes to these techniques, is that the search engine are getting smarter all the time.
I would love it if you - EntireWeb - would create a thread for us to discuss your current and upcoming search engine. I have lots of questions and comments, but no place to actually ask them.