You can definitely take one of the top performing parasites right now - think Youtube, Storify, Buzzfeed and rank them relatively quickly and usually 2-3 months if not longer if you keep replacing lost links.
Like SEO Power stated - SEO is not some simple game of addition... Each site, each link, each niche is different and reacts differently to all of the 300+ if/then variables throughout the extensive algorithm of big G. Making sure you scale appropriately once you "POP-UP" somewhere upon building these links is the most important aspect of any campaign.
Good luck and TEST YOURSELF - any information that you don't make happen for yourself is just here-say.
-RD