I have tried it before. The reason it made sense to me was that you can make super targeted sites, relevant content etc. stick a link on and then power it up with tier 2 links. The advantage is that you can fire links at the site without risking the primary domain too much. Thats how I thought of it. Bit like you would build a web 2.0 network and point those to your money site.
Having said all that, after I tried it my decision was that its not worth it - because in reality its just an expensive way to do things and doesnt have as much reward.
I recommend that you stick to PBNs - if you cant get your exact niche dont worry, go more for the metrics, then just make sure you can build the PBN so that it looks legit and then put in some content / blog posts or whatever related more closely to your niche and put your link in with that content.
If you want some more relevant links then build a web 2.0 network and power that up with tiered links - that way you have the same effect as what you are trying to do but you have zero hosting costs, zero domain registration costs etc.
