the definition of white hat?

Hehe i know its kinda a noobie question but i am really starting to wonder what the definition of being white hat is =)

I have tried out a few black hat tricks..some with more success then others but none were very legit. Now my main question is how do white hat methods make their money? Sales? Google ads?

Would love to have somebody enlighten me

with white hat seo you can expect to gain rewards gradually but over a longer period of time because your site/tactics will have no reason to get banned, blacklisted, dropped, sandboxed, questionned etc, etc

you need to have patience...

hth

basically white hat is nothing against policies of search engines and affiliate networks. blackhat is breaking rules. bluehat/greyhat is in the middle. etc..