Paying to join a Private Blog Network VS Creating your own.

So I came across a pretty reputable guy that basically sells membership to his PBN. You can make 5 guest posts for about $200 bucks. Apparently all the blogs in the network have pretty decent PR and age. A guy also used the network to move from page 5 of google to the first page (about the 3rd or 4th result) I can attest to that because I actually google searched his keyword.

Anyway. Do you guys think it's worth it to spend so much money (its alot for me, i'm in college), or should I just go about trying to score guest posts the hard "white hat way". Although that method seems more grey hat than black to me... Or maybe I could try to create my own blog network? Has anyone here had any success with paid PBN's, or did you find it easier to build your own PBN? What's the best route for a beginner?

If you really think your keyword could hit top 3 and your money site start making money then go for it, With the money earned you could build your private small PBN.

I too have the same question.. I want to know whether the following stats would be enough for a domain to be eligible to be powerful

PR >3
DA >25
Backlinks - 100+

Let's be clear - it is either a blog network or a guest posting service.
For a guest posting service the price might be OK.
But if it is just a PBN then I think you can get it cheaper with other suppliers.
So, if those blogs are ment to give SEO power, not to be functional and popular sites then it is a PBN.

do it legit, feels better to succeed haha

I guess its a guest post service, if you put it like that. I didn't know that the two were mutually exclusive things... Because you actually have to write about 500 words of relevant content. hmm. So basically a Guest Posting service is more valuable than a run of the mill PBN??

lol $200 for 5 posts? Bigbuddy here is making a PBN for $367 first month and then $260 per month for maintenance (301, backlinks etc.). It has 5 sites with only your content and full control.

And both are not same. GP is always on a site which has traffic, authority, links to itself etc. Main thing is traffic. But with PBN you get only links.

If I set up my own PBN, how do I prevent the PR from slowly deteriorating after purchasing the domains.
That seems to be the problem many people have and I don't want to waste the money on the domains
only to have the PR slowly go to zero after a few months

just keep building links to it. You just cannot control links right? So keep building them - more contextual posts to your PBNs and they will work good.