I never said guest posts are bad. They are great, but your maths there is completely off.
DA is a toy for kids. That metric has no connection with reality. The higher the amount of backlinks (not referring domains), the higher DA. Domain with 5RD can easily have DA over 20 and yet, it's utter crap. But you are a guru here, you know that for sure.
Content - 3-5 articles ~ $100
For $1/100 you can get perfect content for PBNs. Even for $1/article of good enough quality for these purposes. Using premium content for PBNs is an unnecessary overkill, so I really hope that you didn't mean that one.
Reliable Hosting = Minimum $70 a year
Yeh, sure, because you will be hosting a money site with 2000 UVs a month... "Low end" hosting is $7 a year. So if you are doing calculatons for "low end", then you should use "low end" hosting.
Private Whois is either free or cots around $9. Not to mention, it's advised to use fake registration details. Looks more real.
Domain ~ $20 If you are lucky enough to get an expired spam free domain just for the renewal fee plus the other small fees like GoDaddy actions etc.
You honestly have no idea what you are talking about. Most of the people here can easily determine whether the domain is spammed or not and whether it has some decent firepower. It's not a rocket science. And believe it or not, there are more ways than getting the domains besides Godaddy auctions. But you guys on Warrior Forum have to yet to figure that out.
So here is a math of someone who's primary job is not to bullshit people:
Domain with RD100+ and TF24, DA varies, but let's say 25 no problem - $100 (you got the maths right there), but if you can do it yourself and do not have to rely on domain brokers like me, you can in some cases pull it off for $30 - $50, including all the fees.
Private Whois = 0, because fake details.
Reliable hosting - Let's use Easy Blog Network as example and that's more or less high end and that would be $40. Low end hosting would be easily $7 - $10.
Content - 20 articles, each 500 words, from Blackbeans that would come to cca $80. With lower quality, like Bossofthebosses here, that would come down to $20. Hand written and unique. Good enough for PBN purposes.
So yeh, TF20+ RD100+ domain with 20 articles and pretty good hosting comes down to - $220 high and give or take $60 low.
But hey if you like to scout for domains, deal with hosting, installing WP, ordering articles, building links to the PBN it is your time right?
Yes, because doing outreach doesn't cost time and energy when dealing with people, or outsourcing it, which will eventually be significantly more expensive.
Your method is nice, keep doing it, there's nothing wrong with it and it works, been doing it myself alongside PBNs. Just be so kind and don't spread shit about "99% PBNs being hit" and "everything dead in month or two", because I personally know about exactly ZERO networks that got hit since the conception of this thread. And that's from talking with around 100+ clients since that time.
So unless you have actual proof of something like that happening or unless you will know a basic thing about PBNs, which you apparently don't ,regardless of what you claim, then please, be so kind and get lost.