Sape questions, my competitor has weird backlink building.

Hella guys! i am new user to sape and i can say that i got used to the interface (finnaly). Now i decided to purchase some homepage links (tf 35-40+). All fine so far, ranking slowly and steadily

But i am just wondering...
Why my competitor who was #1-2 in all keywords including main kws (he got deindexed after few months) , had only 2nd level links instead of homepage? and not only that, most of these 2nd level links had 0-2 reffering domains (no backlinks at all). He had over 500+ sape links like that and he ranked that well... I can definetely say that he had lot of garbage sape links and half of them had tf/cf under 5 or 0... How can someone rank so well just like that? Is the quantity that matters here? Also he didnt used homepage sape links at all, only subdomains...

Are 2nd level links much cheaper and have no OBL/EXT LINKS and are nearly powerful as the homepage ? i am really confused about this

Should i try that strategy on a new domain? or keep building quality homepage pr2-3+ with tf 25-30-35-40+ to my money site. Whats your experience with this ?
Cheers!

Do mix, buy homepage and inner page links.
Also do other types of links not only SAPE, diversity is key.

That's a churn n burn strategy. If you've busted him then Google is probably on their tail and a manual penalty is just around the corner.

Inner page links do work well too. You just need to filter them well. And yep, they are usually much cheaper. For example, a PR 4 homepage link on sape might cost you a fortune ($6-$10) while an inner page of the same PR might cost you around $1-2 and many times even under a dollar.

Most of the inner pages yes will show TF and won't have much links being pointed at them if it was not a popular article or something that was linked by many sites. But that doesn't make it a garbage link. It still holds very good value.