The basic concepts outlined by the OP still work well. Important to treat your web 2.0 properties just like money sites, ie real human content, do not spam them with GSA, I would only ever use GSA for third tier, for second tier get some cheap PBN posts, social bookmarks etc. Also utilise Yahoo Answers, Quora, forum posting, blog posting, all these are excellent sources of backlinks and traffic if done properly.