Sometimes I hear this claim. Everything seems simple—build links, write content, and everything will be smooth sailing.
I think this is a huge misconception for one simple reason: if everything is so simple, why isn’t everyone making tens of thousands of dollars a month? After all, it’s simple.
Scale the system and take the profit. Year after year, increase the volume and make more money.
I see the following reasons:
1. The approach doesn’t work at scale. 1-2 sites gain traction, but 5-10 sites no longer move the same way.
2. Hundreds of hidden PBNs. Pushing a site into the top 3 is not as simple as it seems. We look in Ahrefs, but we don’t see hidden PBNs (my screenshot attached showing hundreds of PBNs pointing to one of the top-ranking sites). For instance, thespruce.com has over 1,000 hidden PBNs, and those are just the ones I found.