hi

they still work but the power is a little less...

Private networks , real ones , not public make miracles nowadays. I have one of my own with 80 different domains and i have incredible results...but only with 500+ absolut unique articles .

You have to be careful with links diversity and also anchor texts diversity...

Cheers and welcome back

Not much change in the past 6 months, Tiered Linking is the hot news now

As far as I know guest posts and private networks work still very well...Try to keep the OBL low.
Many article directories are now dead, but squidoo, hubpages and ezinearticles wont hurt you

Guest posts = Yes
High PR blog networks = No

Second option can work only if you have control over this blog network or if you are sure that owner won't oversell which happens 99.9% of the times.
I have used dozens or private blogs networks and made a lot out of them but it takes 2-3 for Google to kill the entire network with all the client website.

Guest posts (guest blogging) became popular since last year. Folks search great blogs for generating traffic and also backlinks through guest blogging.

Guest posts + high pr private networks still work very well. Just remember to diversify your anchor text when building backlinks.