Exactly. It the idea is totally ridiculous - if you're just starting out, that is.
What usually happens is that people boost themselves up quickly using blackhat so they can afford to quit their jobs. Once they've done this and a year or so has gone by, they start obeying Google's TOS in order to hold their positions and keep the money flowing at a steady rate in the longer term.
This i can believe!
Im sorta new to the whole SEO thing and have gained alot more knowledge here on this forum. From what i can come up with is weather ethical or morally up to par as some may say. The way to get ahead at least to start is using bots, and scripts, and other choice TOOLS that can help you get ahead. You need a solid website foundation regardless, so some basic white hat skillz are needed for sure. But as whitehat as you may want to be, by having the best keywords or having each page on your site super duper optimized etc. It doesn't matter that much if you
1) don't have any traffic going to your site. Or just a little bit
2) don't have a presence in one way or another online.
Your sorta lost in the ocean somewhere in a raft, people cant find you.
This is why I
try to do white hat seo with
choice Black hat methods.
Such as directory submission. thats considered black hat if your using a bot. But is considered whitehat if you do this manually. Yet as BLOOX has said
You could also say white hat does not really exist, because by building backlinks or simply by writing optimized content you are trying to manipulate the serach-engines.

"
Thats totally right,
when you manipulate the search engine in a anyway. This is
supposed to be considered
blackhat.....
So It really comes down to where the line gets drawn between the two.
Most people tend to start out BlackHat and end up Grey/WhiteHat actually IMO.

BlackHat is just easier and more newb friendly.
There is only 1 thing wrong about this statement tho... well, not wrong but something people have to think about when they start doing BH. really just noobs..lol Because when your a noob and you found a new toy.
YOU GET WAY TO OVER EXCITED.
Noobs need to be careful because I have head of alot of stupid noobs submitting regurgitated content to 2500+ directory or article sites and then getting banned for having all the same content. But yes BH is sometimes alot easier than the real knowledge and power of true whitehat. Nt at the same time the BH methods are sometimes much much faster.
To me though Wihte hat is boooring.. Black hat is lot more fun though...
This reply can go on for days. So ill just end it here
Ima go and puff a bowl now. its 4:20 by my watch
LOL
I hope this helped someone lmao