PBN Question - Manual Thin-content penalty

Hi all,

I am a lurker for the most part so I apologize for the long post here.

A few years ago I built a few money sites with a goal of passive income and made a small PBN as that was all the rage back then. All through the major PBN updates, mine never got hit or de-indexed. This PBN helped to rank 8 of my money sites (some better than others).

In December I all of a sudden noticed my main sites were not ranking. When I added them into Google Webmaster Tools sure enough I had the Manual action: Thin content penalty applied. So I read what it meant and thought ok I can see what I did wrong. I had good content, but I tried to get the visitor over the Amazon most of the time (except for one site) without providing any other articles of help or anything.

But then I started reading how others got these messages when Google discovered their PBNs. And I have no idea what to think.

I have since re-built all of my sites on new domains. I've added helpful articles, do not ask the user to goto Amazon as much, etc. I tried to mold it like other affiliate sites I have seen that still rank.

So here are my questions:
1 - How do I know if my PBN is affected? All of the sites are indexed. I have also started to try and rank one of my sites and do see it appearing for the "keyword 2016" term on page 1. Is that a sign that it is still ok?
2 - Can I still build links while my new websites are in the waiting period?

Thanks all,