Thank you for the insights! One last question if you don't mind.. Have you ever paid for buying links? I know it is against Google's policy but SEO companies I

Thank you for the insights! One last question if you don't mind.. Have you ever paid for buying links? I know it is against Google's policy but SEO companies I talked to before I decided to learn it myself told me that 18 out of 100 links are paid links (with maybe 2 free links as every SEO guy is doing broken lb, etc so free links are mostly taken). They said they can even get me links from some pretty big sites if I had the budget for it. Is that true? Would love to hear your thoughts.