My thoughts after the latest Google update

So, as you probably know already, Google just released few changes to their algorithms. Luckily for me, this time I was not damaged at all. In fact, my main money sites went up with about 20%, which is huge if you ask me.

So, based on what I've done lately, here are some of my conclusions:

1. big G does not have a problem with the affiliate websites, or at least not with the ones with unique and quality content. I have few reviews sites(most of them with 5-15 articles) with 2-3 affiliate links per page- no banners, since they do not work for me. All of them, though, have quality content and are user friendly(the visitors are not forced somehow to press on the affiliate links, nor are they forced to watch pages full of ads). I'd really say that few is better, in this case.
2. Google loves to see updated pages, even though they may contain new links or so. I've added 100-150 words to each articles from my MNS sites and most of them gained some new positions only by doing that;
3. it's not worthy to spend time to submit to most of the directories, since most of them are somehow affected by Panda. Instead, one of my conclusions is that links on popular forums(in topics especially) can do real wonders.

You probably know these already, but for me, as a newbie in this world, it's something good to know.

The editing articles idea is brilliant and I'm happy it improved your rankings, the main idea is not to link to unusual websites and have quality articles.
Panda is getting better and better and will someday notice the spinned articles so beware.

I am on the same train of thought as OP. I have completely stopped with squidoo, hubpages, article sites etc... Imo they wont be worth anything in the near future. I have also noticed that Forum backlinks are working REALLY well as of lately. And no, google does not hate affiliate sites. Just make sure to give the buyer exactly what they are looking for, price comparison, Pdf manual to download and so on...

Mister John, before posting something dumb, turn ON your brain next time, ok?
Thanks.

@triplebeamdreams
I can't agree 100% with you. Hub pages or generally speaking, link wheels can get you to first page in no time, especially if you know what you are doing. As a general rule, I prefer to bring to my linkwheels some paid blog posts. Even though this requires some money, my take is that it removes some of the suspicious patterns that Google can detect as it looks more naturally.