This is legit, in a way I been doing this since 2004, 2005. Owning your own networks is the best you can do. This is no secret, just lazy people. It cost money but it's profitable. I lost a lot when my links farms where hit, but it's been adjusted since and with every update some networks suffers some others don't. Does that do not suffer gets tweaked for the next rounds.
Now if you really look at it with $200 you can buy a few hosting accounts for 1 year and various domains and develop them. Again it cost time and money but at the end the ROI is amazing.