Black Hat, Gray Hat, White Hat... What's the difference and what works best?!!!

When people say things like this, it automatically repulses me from their services they offer in their sig.

Very ignorant statement. It might work best for a little while, but sooner or later you're going to get hammered for it. Then your business is screwed.

Any form of seo falls bellow "white hat", so white hat seo technically doesn't exist. That aside, many people define it as whether or not you're using robots/software as well as if you're just out to rip people off.

Just use good ethics and common sense.

Fashionably, I prefer black hats. Ethically, I prefer a halo.

Let me dig into this from an affiliate/vendor stand point and tell you a story which happened to me and hundreds if not thousands of affiliates over a particular product.

As a Affiliate marketer I run purely white hat. The products and services have to be on the up and up and have real value for the purchaser.

A few months ago a vendor made available on one of the major jv networks a SEO analysis and backlink tracker program. The vendor was referred to me by another JV partner who by chance made the landing page for him and gave me a heads up on the launch.

As soon as it became available on the network, I checked out the landing page, the jv information, watched all the videos. Soon after I decided, hey this looks like a good product to promote and I signed up as an affiliate. I gobbled up all the marketing material that was available in the members area. Email swipes and banners, and I received a review copy of the software which was full version.

I checked the software out, used it, and still to this day use it from time to time.

About now you might be asking yourself, well what's wrong with this? Everything seems fine.

Well this is what happened. Like myself, hundreds of affiliates went on a marketing frenzy preparing for the prelaunch. Sending out thousands of emails, setting up banners, building sites, doing blog and video reviews as well as using social media.

It was launch day when all the trouble started. Customers complained the software didn't work. They didn't get a license code and they could not get any kind of support from the vendor.

What happened is that we affiliates as well as the customers were snookered.
The software I found out through research was pirated. This was the review copy as to which it only had one liscense code assigned to the vendor. What the customers bought was junk and worthless.

For 7 days or so the vendor was promoting the product on the network till it was pulled down. I like other vendors were unaware of the negative feedback. I was till I started to get feedback from some angry customers on my list who bought the product. This was devastating to me.

Now not only all these affiliates have dead sites and links to this guy, but also have lost credability with their customers.

So if you are a black hat marketer, stay clear of me, because when I have time I sink as many of them as I can. I am anti black hat to the core.

I'm not so sure of this example of blackhat. For example, there are shops in the city that sell knockoff purses. They are black market - but this is not necessarily a practice of black hat.
LOL, not sure about this either.
Think about it for a minute.

People use pen names to write articles - and convince others they are of the opposite sex sometimes.

And if you are sending referrals to a naked cam on dating site isn't that just like affiliate or cpa marketing?

(she licks the spoon, and stirs the pot)