White hat copycat, traffic but confused after 2 years?

Ok, so don't kill me for this as I have a genuine question even though I may have questionable
tastes when it comes to buying products.
Back in the day 2010 when I was a newbie I bought the whitehat copycat product from an
iffy Dutch guy, I am sure that you know who
Anyway at the time I had the "blinkers on" mentality of thinking that everything works, you just
have to take action, so I did and for the next 2 weeks I blindly built this website to his instructions
which basically were:

Buy a domain with the phrase "free download" in it.
Set up a wordpress blog.

hxxp (dot) free download (.) com

Add the usual policy/privacy pages on it.
Put generic content about free stuff on the home page.

Then...

Install more wordpress blogs on subdirectories with one free product on each.
Plus policy/privacy pages.
ie,
hxxp (dot) free download (.) com/downloadproduct x free
hxxp (dot) free download (.) com/downloadproduct y free
hxxp (dot) free download (.) com/downloadproduct z free
hxxp (dot) free download (.) com/etc.
hxxp (dot) free download (.) com/etc.
hxxp (dot) free download (.) com/etc.
hxxp (dot) free download (.) com/etc.
times 20 in totoal

Set up download links on download pages with cpa offers on them.....
No backlinking, no bookmarking needed!
Sit back and collect yo cash.....they will come.

Right!
But surprisingly they did, slowly at first but after 2 years
there are 1000s of visitors a month.
Cpa didn't convert for me so I now use Adsense.

So to my questions!

Was there any SEO benefit to setting up these sites in subdirectories as directed rather than just pages/posts
on the main site, at the time I didn't question it but now its a royal pain in the a*s to log into and update all of
these sites on a regular basis?
Would I have a better, more authoritative, domain with everything on one site and if so what would it be possible
for me to do at this point?

I would appreciate the input of the experts on BHW.
Thanks