Catch 22

Well, I'm frustrated about something again, so I guess I will blog about it.

It's the organic SEO catch-22. What is the SEO catch-22? It's simple-the people who need SEO skills (and recognize that need) are happy to pay for them but don't have the money to do so.

Likewise, those who have the money to pay for them rarely understand their true SEO need. Therefore, they do one of two things:

1. Throw some money at a big agency and get very little value for their money.

2. Do SEO in-house but don't really put much in it-much being resources, credibility, etc. etc.

Sometimes the actions of the competition will spur a company onward to better efforts, but that's kind of rare.

That said, the only real option for a competent organic SEO is to build his/her own online company (not an SEO consultancy), but that of course brings about its own challenges as you are competing against large companies with well established Internet brands. Even though they may choose to do very little with SEO, they will rank well because of the age and size of their domain, etc...

So what's a competent SEO to do? I'm wondering that myself.

OK, I'm ticked enough to blog again

I don't do the greatest job of keeping up with this blog-I apologize, but generally if I find something that ticks me off enough, I will rant out it here. A blog worthy event has happened.

As I've told you, I am working with a Fortune 500 company as an in house SEO. I'm finding all the more that this arrangement brings with it it's own set of frustrations.

Fortune 500 companies are good at making money. Unfortunately, they are very bad at making money on the Internet I am finding. Why you ask-simple-because PEOPLE COME TO THE WEB FOR FREE STUFF! The quicker a company can discover this truth, the quicker they can make money on the web.

People come to the internet for convenience. If you have a question-bam-there's the answer on a friendly little Google search. If you need a new car-bam-there's free information on how to negotiate with your dealer. If you need a pizza delivered - bam - there's your friendly neighborhood pizza peddler with online ordering. It's quick, it's cheap, and in most cases it's FREE (at least the information and the convenience is).

A Fortune 500 company is often thinking in terms of how it can turn a profit off of a customer action. To that end, it will choose to design it's customer facing web properties around this goal-how to profit from a customer. Instead of looking at the REAL need of 95% of the people who come to the internet - CONVENIENCE and FREE they look at the objectives of the corporation and try to cram them down the customer's throat with their designs.

A SIMPLE design is convenient. A COMPLEX design is not. Customers rarely care how many flying dohickeys you have on your site as much as they care how your site meets their current needs for CONVENIENCE and FREE.

ONLY AFTER you have met these needs are you able to ask for money-and it be freely given! ONCE you have met the needs for convenience, in many cases the needs for free diminish and/or go away completely. How many times have you as a web surfer willingly paid for a service because of it's convenience to you? By engaging a customer on their primary needs, you earn the right to request that they engage based upon your needs. Why is this a difficult concept?

Worse yet is when a company feels that they have engaged based upon the customer's need but they miss the boat entirely. THAT is the most tragic yet. Well, I'm done with my rant for the moment, more to come in the future.

The Fleecing of the Flock

OK, I'm about back where I was yesterday about SEO.

I was on a well known SEO website yesterday. I went to the "professionals" section - the place where non-SEO folks go to get SEO expertise.

To be honest, I'm feeling more and more sorry for people seeking SEO advice. Because the industry is so new, it's impossible to truly set a measure for how you can get results.

So people are stuck-they know they need to look for an SEO because they need to compete-what they don't know is who is really good at SEO. Add to that the fact that SEO is an evolving field-the tactics I used 6 months ago, I will re-evaluate for the next 6 months because of the fact that some engines have made some algorithm changes.

I think I have an answer for that dilemma, I will work to try to spell it out in the weeks to come.

Web Analytics

My biggest gripe in the organic SEO world right now is analytics.

In many organic SEO campaigns, there is very little regard given to the results of the campaign. I've come up with a few hypotheses as to why:

1. Most decision makers do not understand the power or potential of organic SEO - for some reason, organic SEO is seen as "gravy" or icing on the cake of all other marketing efforts in large company environments. To say the least, this appears to be proportional to the "web savviness" of the business in general-and many large businesses today are still working to create a real, usable web strategy.

2. Big companies like to spend money - For whatever reason, there is a higher level of confidence with the greater the amount of money that is spent. This is why you find huge companies that do not have Linux deployed anywhere within their evironment-the confidence appears to come from spending money. This is also why a lot of SEO consulting companies are able to rake in big fees - if they didn't charge them, there would be little confidence in their ability to deliver.

3. Organic SEO's are viewed by some as the ultimate "snake oil salesmen" - while you have to hang out with them to get something you need for your business, there's not a great deal of trust you put in them or their practice.

All of these reasons have worked together to ensure that REAL Key Peformance Indicators (KPI's) will not be developed for SEO. What do I define as a REAL KPI-simple, one that assists a business in devising strategy to make money.

Since most large companies do not anticipate making an appreciable or measureable amount of money from their organic SEO efforts, they do not worry with creating real KPI's and models for success. Smaller companies do not have the volume, so while they likely have more robust models (their survival is much more closely intertwined with their organic SEO efforts), their models likely will not scale to the level necessary to make real strategic decisions at a large corporate level.

So there is a void right now. I will continue to explore exactly how to fill that void and keep you all updated on what I find.

OK, I'm done

OK, I'm about done!

Since I first started this blog, there have been a lot of changes in my life-I am no longer trying for the whole entrepreneur thing and instead I'm working at a Fortune 500 company as an in house SEO.

The view from this side is a little frustrating - I see all of the people literally RAPING these folks (SEO firms and marketing firms) and offering very little value-the frustrating part is that it's very clear-to get in position to do the same, you have to have the relationships.

So, a lot of do nothing companies that are WELL FINANCED - enough so to launch successful marketing campaigns, get the opportunity to forge those relationships. Those relationships allow them to bill HUGE amounts to these companies for very little work.

And why do they do very little work? BECAUSE NO ONE IS GOING TO THE NEXT LEVEL! SEO firms all offer the same advise - because they are not willing (or possibly able) to go to the next level of service-move BEYOND the rankings to the strategic.

The second part of that frustration is that this is dooming organic SEO to a less than strategic role within most organizations - and of course mine is no different.

So, I'm frustrated. I've decided to take my frustration to the ether and I don't know if I'll just try to pump this blog up or if I will start another, but I do have a vision for search and the web in general. From here on, at the least I will spell that out online.

Just checking in

Hello All, I'm just checking in! While I still have the goal of the 27th, I havn't made a lot of progress toward the goal. That bums me out a little.

In being fair to myself, I have done some work toward it-remember, my main entrepreneurial pursuit is the Internet, so I have been becoming more and more familiar with the web. That has helped me quite a bit-I now know how to better market myself on the internet-now I just need the time and inclination to put the information into practice.

It's a bummer that one-when I do have the time, I don't always have the inclination. I wonder if I just don't have the "fire in the belly" necessary to make this whole thing work. I have the desire-boy do I have the desire-but the execution is getting more and more difficult to motivate myself toward. It's like the task to come is so big, I find myself spending a lot of time focusing on the issue itself and not really working. The funny thing about it all is that I have already gotten halfway there-I have already made more than half of what I am looking for and I have done it within 1 month's time. That said, it's definitely attainable, I guess I just wonder why I have a hard time motivating myself to do it. Well, this is just a check in and it's my thoughts on the issue, thanks for reading!

It's been so long

It's been a long time since I've posted here, but I want to resurrect this blog because I have a new quest.

I'm working at a full time after making a go at it on my own. It didn't work out the way I would have hoped it to (as in I had no more money so I had to go to a full time), so I am of course looking to find out how to get back out on my own again.

That said, I have a challenge that I have given myself. I want to be back home-based ASAP, so I am pushing myself to see if I can make my online business profitable enough to get out of the rat race. That challenge is:

By 4/27/06 - Have $300.00 TOTAL in profit from my entrepreneurial efforts
By 5/27/06 - Have $600.00 TOTAL(additional) in profit from my entrepreneurial efforts
By 6/27/06 - Have $1200.00 TOTAL(additional) in profit from my entrepreneurial efforts
By 7/27/06 - Have $2400.00 TOTAL(additional) in profit from my entrepreneurial efforts
By 8/27/06 - Have $4800.00 TOTAL(additional) in profit from my entrepreneurial efforts

If I hit these goals, the 8/27 date (even excluding taxes) will be around when I have the opportunity to leave the rat race. It will still be a little low and I will still need to maintain that income level for a few months before I feel comfortable giving the employer the heave-ho, but if it happens there is a slight possibility that I could give myself a really nice Christmas present and leave the rat race.

So, here is where I will document my quest for the goal. I don't know that I will post daily, but I will post as often as I recall to update my progress.

That said, my update for today-I have already made about .5 of my first goal in a single month's time, but I have not done it profitably. My goal for the week is to assess exactly how I got halfway there and how I might lower my cost basis to do it profitably.

My primary entrepreneurial activity is affiliate marketing and my primary earnings have come from Google AdSense. That will likely continue, and I may throw in a few other projects to try to hit the monetary goal. As time goes forward, I will share my success and any tips I glean on using Adsense.

I'm excited and pumped-I want out of the rat race and I want out BAD!!! I'll keep you all posted!

It's been a few days.

I've been running around a lot so I haven't done a good job of keeping up with the blogs. I wanted to sit down and jot a few notes and bring everyone up to speed on where I have been.

Well, PPC for VitaminFan.com was dismal. I worked with two smaller PPC networks and while they delivered the clicks, they didn't do much for me-in fact, their was no real return at all for Adsense-thanks heavens the whole experiment cost less than $10.00. I didn't let it run long enough to test whether this was due to design or what-I think if I had let it run long enough, I might have been able to develop a trending pattern as to how many people stayed much past the initial page of the site.

Because I do suspect that design is a factor here, I decided to put the site up to a site review on the AssociatePrograms.Com forum. It's URL is http://www.associateprograms.com/discus. It's a great resource for affiliate information in general and the folks who gave me a site review were AWESOME-thanks Emil and StarHugger (of course that's all I know them by). They mentioned the need for more content-and of course that has been my Achilles heel mainly because it's so difficult to do and also because I procrastinate so much.

Well, speaking of procrastination, it's official. I have 30 days to make this whole affiliate marketing thing work. My story-I left my full time job in January and though I looked for another full time job, I was really wanting to find a way to make affiliate marketing work. My wife is a work at home mom (or was, as she is now about to return to work outside the home in August as a teacher).

Money has held out well-in fact, I was fully funded from January till now and I still have several months of funding available to me, but those resources are finite. In fact, if I cannot make a viable profit (for me, $1,000.00 pure profit) by July 31, 2005, I will need to look for a job of any form (up to now, since I've been working on affiliate marketing, I have really only looked for certain types of jobs. If I don't have the profit by July 31, 2005, I've got to take a job period). What type of job I look for will mainly depend on how close I get to the goal. If I am within 20% of the goal and it's clear that I can reach the goal with just a little more work, I may just look for a part time job. If not (if I'm more than 50% away from the goal), I will need to look for a full time job and treat AM as a hobby.

Of course, July does not end it. I need to have a plan for a viable profit of at least 20% growth month over month from July onward to "keep the doors open". Without that, I again need to plan toward a full time job outside of the home.

I think I have a plan right now-if it works, I will write about it after the end of the month-in fact, I'll probably write a series and title it "30 days to $1,000.00". Wish me luck!

Since I want to test my theory on that before trying to write a book on it, I'll instead blog on other projects I have going this month. VitaminFan.com is not a part of the plan, so I will likely write a lot about how it's going.

I also had a brainstorm in the shower (not really a brainstorm because my sister originally had the idea, but I'll be the one to try to flesh it out and maybe work with her)-I happen to be an African-American and I know firsthand the trials of being an African-American in a corporate world. To that end, I would like to start up an interactive site that allows African-Americans to meet and greet. What I need is for the site to go up in 10 days-that's 10 days working part time, as I have this blog, VitaminFan.com and my 30 days project to work on. That's all a tall order, but I think I'm up to the challenge. I will create a blog for it on it's own-I want that to be a marketing tool to get it a little traffic.

My next focus of marketing will be blog and ping, so my next few entries will likely be about this new project and what I discover about blog and ping. That's all for now, I'll try to be a little more consistent, talk to you all later!