It's the same. In today's world of hyper SEO optimization and human-like AI content, the only game in town left is authority. And the way to build authority is backlinks.
> Some friends made a sports site for fun. They were a bunch of FB marketers in the early era and just experimented, plus it was a topic they loved ranting on. They did FB ads then funneled the traffic to a WP site. They hit 4 million pageviews/month in less than half a year. Automated ads didn't work, they paid too little and dropped quality too much.
Hah, as it happens, I know quite a bit about that niche. With the legalization of online sports betting around US states in the last few years, there was actually quite a bit of money to be made by high traffic sports blogs working as affiliates. There was also quite a bit of M&A activity, some of these technologically simple blog sites selling for millions to the bigger sports affiliate groups.