Having been in this business for over 14 years I have seen pretty much everything from every angle. I have dealt with all kinds of people and about 98% of those experiences have been positive.

I can’t even begin to guess how many emails I have answered in those 14 years but it is a lot.

The one thing that most of the emails I receive have in common is the intense desire the person writing has to succeed in online marketing.

But we all know that there is a ton of garbage online, products where the person doing the selling knows full well the claims made are complete and total B.S.

The bottom line is if someone promises you riches and especially quick riches, run, just get the hell away, and move on. It’s not going to happen unless you win the lottery.

I’ve always had one primary mission with any business I’ve been involved in, and that is to help people succeed.

Now I’m not going to in any way try and make the case that everyone I have tried to help has succeeded, many have not.

And it’s not for lack of me trying and it’s often not from the lack of the other person not trying. Sometimes an individuals skill set is not suited to a specific task or career, as well as another person’s might be. Not everyone is good at everything.

I can ski. I’ve tried to teach a lot of people to ski. Most never achieve anywhere near the degree of skill that I have. Not everyone is born to be a good skier. Bottom line.

But let me get to the point I want to make, and this is where the rant comes in..

We all know that the economies in most of the western countries have not been great this past year or two.

In that time I have received quite a number of emails from customers or potential customers who have told me a very similar story. That they need quick money, they lost their job, they need to make this work or they are going to lose their house, they are looking for some kind of guarantee that I can solve their problems with some product or service that I am offering.

They want a guarantee that such and such a product will get them out of their dilemma.

Let’s look at a couple realities.

If you are in need of quick cash, or on the verge of losing your home, or something that falls into the really awful category, do not, I said DO NOT even think about online marketing as your salvation. It is not. Online marketing is a career, a business, it is not a means of getting quick cash in your pocket.

Do not, I repeat DO NOT spend any money with me or anyone else if you are down to your last dime. It’s not that you can’t make money online, but that is not your immediate problem if you happen to need a quick infusion of cash. You need to resolve the immediate problem before thinking long term.

Once you get things under control, then you can consider other options for building a business but when you are down to your last few pennies and are on the verge of losing your home, please don’t look at the online world as your way of getting out of the hole you are in. Your hole will only get deeper.

But I think it’s so easy to understand why people naturally turn to the Internet as a way out of serious financial problems, and it has to do with all the B.S. hype surrounding far too many products. And let me be specific, I’m not talking about a sales letter that tries to get you to buy a product, that is advertising, what I’m talking about are the hucksters who prey on the newbies or those very people needing quick cash, making claims of fortunes to be made in a very short time, telling you how you can make tens of thousands each month. It’s all B.S. And the sooner most people accept that the better off everyone will be.

My goal is to teach people how to make $500 not $50,000 in a month. Believe me. For most people earning $500 in a month in what could be considered extra income is in fact, life changing money.

But here’s the really sad part of how the promises of get rich quick schemes have hurt people in ways most people never consider.

In the past year alone, I have received a lot of emails stating all the things I mentioned above.

I own several businesses, and in 21 of those cases, I have actually offered people a chance to work for one of my businesses. In other words, I would pay them for work they do. It costs the person nothing. Yes it does involve real work, and while the pay may not earn you 50K per year it certainly can earn you 4 figures per month, plus the offer allowed people to work on their time and work as much or as little as they wanted, but the key word here is work. it required people to work.

Guess how many of those 21 offers I made were accepted?

ZERO.

And you know what? I don’t blame the people who did not take my offer. I don’t think these people are lazy or are people that really don’t want to succeed, quite the contrary. I feel the problem is in most cases, that they have fallen victim to the hype, that they can make a lot more, a lot faster with a lot less work if they just find the right ‘program’ online.

The even more amazing thing is that many of these very same people have probably already been around the block so to speak, with quite a number of over hyped products that promised the very things they are still searching for without success. And they still don’t realize, it doesn’t work that way.

I really hope that none of you falls into this category but if you do, a reality check is in order.

What I do is not a hobby, it’s a business, and most people fail to understand that making money online involves creating and running a real business.

As the title of this post states, internet marketing is great but… it’s a career choice, a real business, not a get rich quick scheme.

There’s a lot of really good people in this business, but also a lot of hucksters. Remember the old adage, if it sounds to good to be true… it probably is.

- Dave -

http://www.greenbeansnmore.com

This site is a perfect lesson on organic SEO and how to apply basic techniques and turn a site into a traffic powerhouse..

This site currently averages around 5000 unique visitors per day, and that’s on a normal day. during those times of the year when holidays are upon us, this site has pulled in as many as 25,000 unique visitors per day.

The comments you will read below that are Cathy’s are attributed to her, I have added my own comments when needed.

Let me state that even though I come from a background of SEO, I really never spent much time teaching Cathy SEO. I gave her the owners manual to Dreamweaver, signed her up for some HTML 101 classes at the college which they canceled before her courses were complete, and I spent maybe an hour or two with her at the beginning.

This site is a passion and a labor of love for her. It was not built to make money but does pretty well.

The niche was selected simply from a conversation we had where Cathy said she had no idea what topic to build a site around. I told her she made some really killer green beans and that was it.

She likes to cook. And this site 2 years later is the end result though it is always a work in progress.

There are no professional graphics. To this day she rarely asks me a question about anything related to the site, in fact she doesn’t let me near it or have anything to do with it.

It’s her baby, and one she is quite proud of.

It proves that you don’t have to always have a site that is in those all too common niches to make some decent money online.

If you have a passion, it can turn into a very profitable site if you put some work into it. It won’t happen overnight.

But it can certainly be done.

Cathy’s comments:
I had taken html coding classes at our local community college and needed to use what I’d learned before I forgot it. I decided to write about green beans because I like them! It was Dave’s idea to call it green beans “n more” so that I would be able to add information about other vegetables on the site.

Dave’s Comments:
I did suggest the domain name and registered it for Cathy, she had no idea of how to choose a domain name nor register one and still to this day, doesn’t.

Cathy’s Comments:
I used a very basic site design with the menu on the left. I chose to use broad topics relating to green beans on the menu such as “how to grow green beans”, “freezing green beans”, “canning green beans”, “varieties of green beans” and “green bean recipes”.

Dave’s Comments:
I did help Cathy create the very basic template, that’s about all I did, I created the images and the very basic layout. As you can tell, I’m not very good at site design which is why I make my living in other more suitable areas.

Cathy’s Comments:
Once I had the pages above made I started adding green bean recipes.

As the site grew I got a lot of traffic several months after it was launched, in the following spring for the search term “growing green beans” and similar searches, but then the traffic would slow. It was Dave’s idea that I add topics that would have people searching my site on a more year round basis. I decided to add Thanksgiving content. I then added “Holiday Recipes” and “Valentines Day and Romantic Dinner Ideas”.

Dave’s Comments:
This site absolutely rocks at Thanksgiving time especially. The traffic is incredible. When I suggested that Cathy expand her search terms she really didn’t think there would be much search traffic for them. But go to any keyword database and search for terms as seemingly benign as pork chops, and you’ll be amazed at the number of searches, and virtually no competition.

Cathy’s Comments:
Over time I have added recipes for BBQ’s and cookouts, Mediterranean and Indian recipes. Each adding potential for more traffic and giving me more traffic year round.

Here are some of the things I do.

1 ) Keyword research.  I NEVER make a page without doing keyword research – NEVER.

I use Keyword Universe in Wordtracker for this. I search the
terms in Google with quotes. When I do a search for a
particular term – use “avgolemono” as an example, I use a variety of the terms in Wordtracker such as “avgolemono sauce”, “avgolemono recipes”. I do a Google search for the actual term to find different words associated with it on other pages, such as “greek lemon sauce” and “greek recipes” and “egg lemon sauce”.

When using Wordtracker I pay attention to how many searches the term receives. Of course you’ll find the more searches the term has the more competing pages it has.  When my site was new I chose terms with less than 50,000 competing pages in Google, when searched with quotes,  Now that my site is ranking well in Google I will use keywords with more competing pages. I use a variety of words with high and low competing pages.

I use a variety of keywords (usually 8 to 10 or more) when writing content on a page and when writing the meta description, title, h1 tag and url. Always remember to keep the writing natural. Don’t overstuff with keywords. Here’s a pretty good example of that http://www.greenbeansnmore.com/greeklemonandeggsauceavgolemono.html.

Dave’s Comments:
Keyword research. The most important element of any project. Choosing a niche that is both doable and gets search traffic. But the way you use the keywords is very important. Those of you who have purchased my Profit Loophole course have a very detailed explanation detailing what Cathy broadly describes above.

I confess, that the couple of hours I spent with her at the beginning dealt with keyword research. Get it right and you will do very well. get it wrong, and well, probably not.

But it is not rocket science, it is one of those areas that you can apply some very specific techniques to and come away a winner more often than not. The key is to truly understand the concepts, apply them and repeat them.

Cathy’s Comments:
2 ) Quality content & Updating the Site. One thing that’s always been very important to me is the quality of content on my site.  I did a lot of reading and research to come up with informative content for my pages. I still do reading and research and update my pages “growing”, “canning”, “freezing” and “variety” pages several times a year.

Dave’s Comments:
The point Cathy makes here is an important one. Her site is a constant work in progress, it is never done, Any page is subject to being updated with fresh content, and she does this on a regular basis, I’m not talking massive changes, but small changes and additions. But this is not a site for which she spends hours per day working on. In fact we’re talking a couple hours, a couple days per week.

Cathy’s Comments:
All content on my site is in my own wording. Where I have quoted or used exact recipes I give a link or name the source.

3 ) Updating the site. I try to add at least two recipes a month, sometimes it’s more. I also use my own pictures on the site.

4 ) On some of my early pages I used bbq-a, bbq-b, bbq-c, etc. as page url’s. I now use keywords in my page url’s – example;

http://www.greenbeansnmore.com/persianlovecake.html

5 ) When writing a title I use up to three keywords, and use a combination of terms that have high search numbers and lower search numbers. If I am posting a recipe from a particular source (and I try to use trusted sources that are well known) I may use the name (author or website) in the title. I use other keywords in the h1 tag.

6 ) As I often see my page come up on a Google search with the meta description I take care in writing a description that I think will catch the eye of the searcher.

7 ) I update the index page on a fairly regular basis using content corresponding with a particular time of year. Spring it’s growing green beans, Summer it’s bbq and cookouts, Fall and winter it’s Thanksgiving and holiday recipes.

8 ) Whenever I add a new page or update pages I always update my sitemaps.

9 ) Getting links has probably been the most time consuming and frustrating thing I’ve had to do. When the site was new I sought out links from other sites. As I had no “page rank” there were very few who would link with me. I literally sent out hundreds of requests. Now that the site has some ranking I often receive link requests. I have opted to only link to similar type sites and I don’t accept directory links. If you visit my link to us page you’ll see my link criteria.
http://www.greenbeansnmore.com/link-to-us.html

Dave’s Comments:
I gave Cathy NO direction in this area really, she came up with her own policies and decided how she wanted to do her linking entirely on her own. I bet in the past 2 years she has not asked me more than 5 questions about linking.

Cathy’s Comments:
I think what has also helped my site to rank well is linking that others have done to me on websites (chowhound.com, mothernaturenetwork.com) blogs (cumberlandfarmersmarketassociation.blogspot.com), gardening sites (schoolgardenweekly.com), and even newspapers (Chicago Sun Times, Charleston Gazette).

What has brought these people to my site is QUALITY CONTENT.

Dave’s Comments:
Build Quality Content and the big sites will find you, and if you’ve got something good to offer, it can pay off big time without you even having to do much. Several years ago I had a site of mine featured in Wired magazine. I had no idea till I saw my traffic go through the roof for about a week. It was a site that was on a normal day making about 20 sales and that shot up to over 100 per day just from one link, and it was all direct traffic.

Links from big sites are not just about the link pop they can give you. It’s about buzz. Those people who come to your site from major sites, are quite likely to bookmark your site. That’s stickiness. Those people tend to return again and again, and then tell others. It’s not true viral marketing but has some viral aspects to it.

Cathy’s Comments:
10 ) Article writing. This is another great way to get links to your site. I used ezine articles, especially when the site was first launched. They review all the articles and will let you know what they do and don’t like. They only post QUALITY articles. A great place to use the keywords you’ve researched.

Dave’s Comments:
EZA is a great source of traffic as well. Their articles tend to rank very well in Google. Good quality articles submitted to EZA can expect to get a click through rate of about 15-20% to your site listed in the author bio.

Cathy’s Comments:
11 ) Monetizing the site. I did not put Google Adsense on my site for several months. Dave felt it was best for the brand new site to appear non-commercial. I have several affiliate ads on my site which obviously work within the green bean/recipe theme (gardening, spices).

I have had the “opportunity” to eavesdrop on many conversations that Dave has had with clients over the years on how to get their sites to rank higher in the search engines.  While I really didn’t understand much if any of what he was talking about at the time, once I started building my site certain things that I had heard often, started making sense to me.

These are the points I’ve picked up:

1) Choosing a market you can rank well in
2) keyword research
3) quality content
4) updating the site on a regular basis
5) linking

Please keep this in mind – results don’t happen overnight. Don’t give-up on your site. You will be rewarded in time for your good work.

Several months ago I asked Dave a question about a link I was offered and his reply to me was “continue to do what you’ve been doing”.

Dave’s Comments:
While this is just a very broad overview, it should give you a good idea of what it takes to build a single site from scratch that can start out as nothing more than a hobby, an interest, or a passion you have, and turn into something much bigger.

Remember, a lot of the biggest online sites today were never built with the intention of making money. They were built as hobbies, projects, a means to share.

So while there is nothing wrong with working in the more common markets if that is your choice, don’t ignore things that may often seem out of the ordinary or a topic not often discussed on marketing forums. The reality is there are so many topics and niches that can turn into money makers, that you are only limited by your imagination, and the effort you put into it.

- Dave -

Incoming search terms for the article:

• Metodi Metev
• http://www profitocracy com/2009/08/20/how-a-complete-novice-took-a-site-from-scratch-to-over-1500000-annual-unique-visitors-in-2-short-years/
• bbq wordtracker

6 minutes..

The previous blog post was indexed by Google in exactly 6 minutes, by the time I got around to taking the screenshot above, 35 minutes had passed.
This is about as quick an indexing time as I’ve seen.

- Dave -

Incoming search terms for the article:

• site:profitocracy com

Tom Costello is the CEO of Cuil, for those of you who don’t know much about Cuil, it’s a search engine, and one whose interface I really like, (though others hate it) but that’s not the point here.

Tom’s wife Anna Patterson, formerly employed by Google, has her name on one of Google’s search patents so this is more than just some mindless blather so assign it some weight, though by no means is it a super deep sampling of data.

The article compares Bing results to Google.

Form you own opinion..

If you get bored easily reading these types of docs you might not get beyond the 3rd paragraph, but there is one very interesting item mentioned in the doc, (at least I think it is) see if you can find it, and then test it yourself.

READ IT HERE

- Dave -

I have an immediate job opening for an individual with a decent SEO background.

You do not have to be an SEO guru, or have done it for a living, but you need a very good understanding of basic SEO techniques, and also be very customer oriented.

The job would require appx 10 hours per week from you, but it could be more.

You being able to write SEO oriented educational materials world be a bonus.

The job functions would largely revolve around providing SEO customer support to an existing customer base.

You would be working from home with this job and the hours would be flexible.

Dependability is a huge requirement. The ability to communicate in writing with others is mandatory, I’m not talking IM chat or tweets. You need to be able to, when needed offer in depth explanations to why something is being done a certain way as it applies to the specific business.

If this is something you are interested in, please email me at dave (at) arundel.net  and I can give you more information.

- Dave -

One of the first things you learn in SEO is not to follow or believe what you read in forums, but believe what your eyes and data tell you.

There are a lot of myths perpetrated on a lot of forums regarding Page Rank, and really anything related to search engines.

I’m not going to come out and claim I know everything about how page rank operates, nor every dark secret about SEO, anyone that claims they do is a liar. And that would include most of the folks who work at Google. Only a few are really privy to that info.

But the continuing obsession I see from many regarding Google Page rank is not only foolish, in many cases, it is just plain wrong, and more importantly, really wastes a lot of valuable time that could be used pursuing more profitable activities.

Let’s talk about a couple basics.

1) Don’t put much stock on what you see on that little green toolbar. At best it is nothing more than a really rough estimate of your true Page Rank from a snapshot in time that often is many months ago. It has virtually no relationship to your CURRENT internal Google page rank, which more than likely is a constantly moving and adjusted value.

2) The toolbar’s main purpose has always been as a data gathering tool for Google. Sure it offers you some features other than the little green bar, but just be aware that if you are using Page Rank checker, you are passing info on to Google about your surfing habits.

If you have no issues with this, no worries, but if that’s all you need a better option if you are using Firefox is to grab this extension.

http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

So does Page Rank matter?

Well it’s pretty clear that the influence Page Rank has on actual rankings is very mixed at best.

Now let’s not confuse Page Rank and Authority. Remember, Page Rank is factored on a page by page basis, Authority is more likely site specific.

Let’s say you got a link from a major authority site, whose front page has a PR of 8, but your link is somewhere on an internal page that shows little or no page rank. What is the true value of that link?

A link from an authority site regardless of the PR of the page is going to be weighted more heavily than a link from a page on another site with an equal PR, that has far less authority.

Page Rank may be indicative of the general authority status of the site, but the PR of the specific page is not what passes the real value to your site as far as the effect it will have on ranking.

Authority also can be talked about in terms of trust, how much is the link from a site trusted?

So use Page Rank as a very basic guide to trying to come up with a site’s authority or trust.

Another important factor to consider in determining the value of a link, is the spidering frequency that a site receives from Google. A real easy way to check this, and it’s far from fool proof is to just check the cache date of a specific page.

If you have a site that is both deeply indexed, and getting the internal pages deeply spidered on a frequent basis, the site has some quality to it, regardless of the actual Page Rank being displayed.

While it is generally true that sites whose PR is higher tend to get spidered frequently, that is not always the case. But so can sites who PR is low or zero why? Well, if your site is indexed, your PR is higher than zero, and you have no idea of the true internal PR Google is using. There are a few tools that try and guess it, but it’s just that, an educated guess.

The reality is there are many factors that you need to look at when trying to place a value on a link, and far too many people are only looking at the Page Rank of a site and that is a huge mistake.

I have a lot of sites that are ranking in the top 5 for fairly competitive keywords that have a PR of 0 or maybe a PR of 1.

These are not new sites or sites that just showed up in the top spots recently, these are sites that have been hanging around the top 1-20 positions for quite a while.

The first thing I look at when trying to place a value on a link is the possible authority status of a site. Again, I’ll use the front page PR as a guide but it is just a very rough indicator of authority, but if a site has some perceived authority I don’t care what the PR is of the page my link will be on, as long as it is spiderable.

You can also try and gauge authority status by looking the Alexa rating of a site. Is the trend going up or down? Is traffic steady or very spiky?

I then focus on site saturation which can easily be done by entering

site:www.domain.com

…into Google.  The more pages indexed the better.

I then look at the cache dates of the front page and some random internal pages. It’s important to make sure the internal pages are getting spidered fairly often as well.

Another possible item you can look at is the actual age of the domain. do a whois search. An older domain is always better, but not if the domain has had multiple owners, and has been dropped at a registrar multiple times, so this one I don’t worry about too much.

I rarely concern myself with the PR of a specific page.

So, even if a site has a low or no PR, even on the front page, if that site is getting indexed heavily with very frequent cache dates, I’d still gladly take a link from that site.

Google tends NOT to aggressively spider crappy sites, at least not consistently.

I’m still amazed when I see threads of excitement on forums stating that Google has done a Page Rank update, Great you now have a very rough estimate using a totally generic methodology, of what they thought of your site some time in the past.

And also remember, Google updates the toolbar PR, probably 3-4 times per year, at most. Why not more often? What’s the need? They get exactly what they want out of the toolbar now without having to expend much in the way of resources to get that data.

- Dave -

If you sell a product online, specifically one that you own, you’re going to have to deal with customer support issues.

I don’t care how great your product, how good the materials you’ve provided your customers ahead of time, you’re going to get a lot of support issues. That is a fact.

You’re also going to have customers who want refunds, again, it doesn’t matter how good your product. It is just a fact of life of doing business online.

You’re also starting the game with 2 strikes against you.

What do I mean?

Well how often do you get a refund request from a customer who is threatening to open a dispute, file  a charge back, report you to the Better Business Bureau, etc, and you’ve never even had a single email exchange with this person?

While these certainly don’t make up a majority of refund requests you will receive, I’m pretty certain that everyone that sells anything online has received more than a handful of requests that more or less follow that pattern.

It’s human nature for us to just blow this person off as a nut job, maybe a few are, but let’s look at this a bit deeper, and look at it in a way that each of us can relate to.

The bottom line is, customer service and support online and off has become so GD AWFUL that it’s what people have come to expect.

People have been pre conditioned to expect the worst, becuuse that is exactly what their experiences have likely been. They’re not ticked off with you, but have probably been screwed over so many times before that they just assume that’s the way things work.

Sure, there are businesses both online and off that still deliver, but the burden is now on the business to prove that they actually give a damn about the customer. Unfortunately, most don’t.

It has come pretty much full circle. Probably as recently as 25 years ago, you just accepted that companies and businesses would stand behind their products and services. Now most people just assume they are on their own when they make a purchase because the ugly truth is, in most cases you are.

We see it everyday, from dealing with airlines, to just walking into a department store and trying to get someone to wait on you or find someone who has even the slightest clue about what they are supposed to be selling.

Here’s a question?

Which side are you on?

Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you would be happy with YOUR own customer service?

In the online world there’s a really simple way to answer this.

How long do you make your customers wait before replying to their inquiries?  After all, most of our support inquiries come via email.

If your answer is not at the very least same day, or a lot faster, you’ve got a problem you need to resolve.

The fact that customer service across the board is more or less worthless, means this is one area where almost anyone can stand out in a crowd quite easily.

When I started in the SEO business in 1996, virtually all of my customers came to me via word of mouth.

But here’s something that might surprise you. It wasn’t my paying customers that sent me most of my new customers. Nope, it was the people who I turned away.

How’s that?

My phone rang a lot, and in the early days of SEO, let’s say pre 2000, a lot of folks were getting ripped off big time by SEO companies. Most people had no clue what they were doing online, especially when it came to search engine marketing. I can’t tell you how many people that called me had already spoken to other companies who had given them quotes of absolutely outrageous prices (at the time) for services these people didn’t need.

I’d do a bit of research based on the info the caller gave me and I’d often discover that many of these folks were doing just fine on their own, they had no clue why, but they were already in many cases, ranking very well for the exact terms others wanted to charge them thousands for.

A lot of these people I just sent away telling them to save their money and use it elsewhere, that they didn’t need to spend it with me or any other SEO service, some ended up doing a 1 hour consultation just to get a better grip on the basics of what they were doing right.

The ones who I turned away, are the people that sent me the most customers over 8 years. Many sent me a LOT of customers. I had built up a level of trust with these people.

What percentage of online business do you really think have built up a level of trust with their customers?

Not many, and you know what, it really doesn’t have that much to do with whether your product is a great one, an average one, or one that really stinks, it’s how you respond to your customers when they have concerns.

Customer support is something that you have 100% TOTAL control over. Do it right and you build trust. Mess it up and you likely won’t be doing this 10 years from now.

If you are selling online, you are running a business, I don’t care what size or what volume you do, you’re running a business. Treat it like one, and remember who pays the bills. It’s those people sending you the emails.

What are your thoughts on customer service??

- Dave -