You sort of describe two different types of things: one legit and the other not. There is always some market for finding a niche and filling with real content, but Google has cracked down very hard on link farms and autoblogs over the last couple of years (a fact of which I'm glad). I believe it's very, very difficult to get much visibility on the search engines with scam sites anymore.
The Huffington Post and the Demand Media sites also stole all the keyword farm thunder when they took that tactic to the big time and commandeered Google rankings.
The Huffington Post and the Demand Media sites also stole all the keyword farm thunder when they took that tactic to the big time and commandeered Google rankings.
I know what you're saying - and I would offer actual products (and value) to users/viewers/members - but also utilize some, "shady" tactics as well to maximize revenue. A legit site, but using promo cycles with not so common tactics (using SENuke to blast rss directories /w your feed), or using lockers on your users, stuff like that.
