Andrew Goodman Interviewed

Lee Odden interviews Mr. Google AdWords. Of particular interest to me, Andrew speaking on creating his guide to AdWords:

The first one, of course, came out in ebook form in March 2002 and really took off the moment I started selling it. A bit later, MarketingSherpa and many others helped to publicize it. Believe it or not, I'd been working on a comprehensive SEO document for eighteen months by that point, but I kept feeling like the subject was too broad and no one would get excited about it, so I never completed it.

I think I sorta proved there would / could be demand for an ebook about SEO, as many other SEO book authors have, but I would bet that Andrew has made far greater profit by targeting a niche that is prequalified to have money to spend on ads.

Many people want SEO because they don't have a functional business model and are looking for a free ride. Sure there are probably more searches for SEO than AdWords, but probably less buyers. And another thing that hurts the SEO Book concept is that many of the people looking for SEO believe that there is some automated solution that will make them gobs of money. I know I personally bought a bunch of junky SEO software before I bought any books on the topic.

While he did not discuss organic search in deep depth in his book Andrew Goodman's ebook was the first legit book covering the search space that really helped me better understand some of the limitations of SEO as a service. I think his ebook was the first ebook I read where I didn't feel that the author wrote it to up sell me some sleazy garbage software or put me on a list to spam my inbox.