Affilliate progams and effect on referred page rank

[sdadesky]

Is this spam?
Grey hat? Black hat?
Stupid? Smart?

1) Identify leading affiliate programs in market
Those with best content, engines, etc
Sign up as affiliate with those having
pr rank of 3+

2) Create niche page for 1 area of that market
on your own server. Different ip than "niche"
site.

3) Most affiliate sites allow you to have header
or footer pages with links back to your own site.
Point 1 link back to "niche" site.

4) Set up a few hundred of the above, each on
different ip number. In many cases no host account is even needed.

Cost: +- $400 a month
Benefit? 100 + targeted links from PR3 + sites,
all thematically matched to niche site.

Some (but presumably very sparse) traffic
from affiliate sites.

[cbp]

I vote for 'stupid'

CBP

[sdadesky]

Originally Posted by cbp

I vote for 'stupid'

CBP

CBP. Care to elaborate on that answer?

Are you saying that because

it would be ineffective?
If so are all affiliate programs condemned to only benefit their hosts, not their affiliates? I know of one particular travel site where the top 3 affiliates made a lot more money than the host site

it would be viewed as spam by se's?
And if so, why? If the same person owned many identical affiliate sites with the same content, I could see how that is spam. But if that person owned an affiliate site of say, travelocity for airlines, bed-and-breakfasts in Europe, safaris in Africa, and botanical tours of Australia, I would not consider that spam.