Sometimes I mention something that seems exceptionally important to me that has absolutely no importance in the grand scheme of things (most of my important things probably fall into this category). Other times some things have far greater importance to others for other reasons.

I always learn alot when others change my perspective of why things are important or what words mean.

A while back I read one person explaining to another on a forum about something they learned from something I wrote, stating what they thought I was explaining and what I meant.

What they learned was, in my opinion, something exceptionally powerful, although I absolutely was not trying to convey the message they learned & I had not thought of what they were saying in the same way they did (at least until I read what they wrote).

I learned a ton from their interpretation of what I was trying to say :) The cool thing is, their feedback can be used to change how I think, write, & act; and it was available fast & free.

The most valuable thing anyone in any field can have is the attention and feedback of interested people. Sometimes I shoot myself in the foot by how I ask for it, but far more often I shoot myself in the foot by not asking frequently enough or not giving people reasons to want to give me feedback.

I search for my name and words semantically related to me or things I have done about once or twice a month and often find stuff that made me wish I was searching about twice as often.

Recently I asked my friend Mike to make another SEO related tool. When I initially did I thought it would be cool for feature X, but then I realized the tool would double greatly as a Y, which could potentially have much broader use, and appeal to a wider community for different reasons (which could cheaply net me a TON of high quality inbound links).

Before it launches I may ask a few friends for feedback about it's name. When the rough beta is up I will be sure to ask for feedback on this blog about it's functionality & the like.

Philipp Lenssen recently wrote a cool blog post about meeting a tribal linguist who changed his perspective of many simple words.

I snipped a bit of it and referenced it below, but it is well worth reading his whole post.

I don't think that after I met this man, I was ever the same again - not when it comes to certain simple words. Nowadays when I think gratefulness would be appropriate, I think back to our conversation, and how easy it is to just say "thanks." But how hard it is to act instead of talk; to be loyal in what you do, instead of reaffirming with words. How hard it is to change your way of living, to adjust your thinking, instead of saying "I'm sorry." How hard it is to carry someone in your mind instead of saying "hello" and "good bye." How hard it is to stick to someone for the rest of your life instead of uttering the words "I love you." And yet, how much more sincere and good-hearted it might be.

Thanks to all of the people who recently gave me feedback in one way or another.

So it is a bit hard to navigate the internet marketing front without stepping on a few people's toes. Sometimes when other people step on your toes they do not realize it or do not care. Those people are usually the quickest and most easly offended people when you do things that invade their territory.

Truth be told I always wanted to create the ultimate link analysis tool. A while ago I thought ThreadWatch was going to do it, but that idea - for one reason or another - fell through. Later down the road a person contacted me with a pre beta type version of Backlink Analyzer, and offered to sell it to me for $1,200, which is not a lot of cash.

I had a few friends look at it, and they said it looked decent. Almost everyone noted how much quicker it was than other related software on the market.

I bought it and have been working with the programmers to add and remove features such that it would hopefully remain useful while being search engine friendly, which has costed me a few thousand more. By the time it is fully where it needs to be it may likely end up costing somewhere into 5 figures.

That is a lot to pay to develop free software that does not have a revenue stream, but my goal is to help new webmasters be able to compete with larger established players. A large part of that business model is going to be referencing cool stuff, creating cool stuff, & giving stuff away, and hoping that out of it good karma sorta comes back and helps me on the marketing front. In many ways it has - perhaps even more than I deserve.

I think the single most important part about creating stuff is that it gives you an excuse or reasoning to create original content around the tools or ideas. So many of the channels are just "blah said blah" and at times I often feel like I am letting myself do that. It is really easy to do too, especially when you got guys like Gary Price, NickW, and Danny Sullivan digging up so much good stuff.

The biggest cost in developing such software is time though, as you have to go back and forth a number of times to get exactly what you are looking for, and then if you get any serious distribution you have the potential customer support issues.

I remember when SEO Elite first started out. It went by the name of Link Proctor. I was one of the first people who gave Brad Callen a ton of feedback to make his software better, even telling him to change the name and features to add. Over time it got better, but the marketing got more and more aggressive.

His software essentially cloned OptiLink, but with a few added features and much more aggressive marketing.

I eventually wrote a mini guide for him, which I sold him the rights to package with his software. Later while looking at his sales letter I noticed that he put $79 as the suggested value of that bonus . Not so surprisingly that is the exact price I sell my full ebook for. He later changed that price after I told him how bad it pissed me off, but it was no accident that he marketed my free bonus as "newly released" and at "$79". He knew what he was doing. Stepping on my toes.

If people asked on a forum he would tell them that my ebook has broader coverage, but he was driving a ton of traffic at his sales letter, and it clearly led people to assume my ebook was a throw in.

I still get tons and tons of emails from people asking for free product support for his software or my ebook that comes with it. Even today I had some.

That is surely a valuable lesson in branding. Giving away a similar product to your main revenue stream on another channel for a one time fee or additional exposure can be an exceptionally bad call for branding purposes. Dumb dumb dumb.

Recently Brad sent me an email thanking me for "undercutting someone that's been more than kind to you. Anyway, just a little hurt that you would try to purposely undercut my means of earning a living."

I don't consider some of the marketing methods he was using as being more than kind to me.

• What did he think he was doing to OptiLink when he cloned their software and marketed it aggressively? I bet that "undercut someone's means of earning a living."

• What did he think he was doing when he put a $79 price point on the guide I wrote for him? I bet that "undercut someone's means of earning a living."
• What did he think he was doing when he put a banner on SEO Chat offering a free SEO Book to all SEO Chat members? With the banner using similar colors to my site no less? I bet that "undercut someone's means of earning a living."
• What did he think he was doing when he created a free SEO Book for affiliates which allowed them to insert their affiliate ID number into the book? When combined with the above I bet that "undercut someone's means of earning a living."

In the past he also wanted me to give his software home page advertising on my blog in exchange for higher affiliate comission or ads on more static websites he ownes.

The thing is, should I have been able to create faster software than that was on the market for only a few grand? Were the people selling the leading software holding up their end of the bargain?

Does the software automate your ability to cash checks? Some does, but most link analysis software just saves you time...it does not fully automate the process. Are the sales letter claims that the software creaters do not spend a dime on advertising true? Probably not. Especially if they sometimes complain about how expensive certain ads are. Are the claims to get hundreds of free links in under 10 minutes honest?

I could have launched the $1,200 version and it would have been better than many of the other programs, the only thing that stopped me from doing that is that I did not want to get banned by Google for scraping PageRank.

This is in no way a hate post toward Brad. He and I chatted a good bit in the past, and I think he generally is a smart marketer.

I always wanted to create killer free link software (see Link Harvester or Hub Finder), but the low cost of Backlink Analyzer combined with Brad's SEO Books should be free marketing made creating more and better link software a no brainer.

So I get a ton of emails from people offering to rank my website for me. Usually I delete them, but sometimes I reply, asking if they also offer email spamming solutions.

I think the word solutions makes them think I am serious. Sometimes changing or adding one word makes a big difference. Most of them think I am serious and try to sell to the lead. Some manually follow up multiple times. Most of them use a phrase like high volume email deployers. Funny.

(the Jon Stewart video was found on ThreadWatch - I really like the De.lic.ious tags thingie.)

Some people have rare or frustrating conditions which disable them or take significant focus away from living their lives. In the past these conditions would be nothing but a cost, in terms of: money, time, social energy, and emotional energy.

The worse a condition is, the greater value there is in a solution to the problem. The problem with the past is that you needed a large enough market and substantial marketing money to reach like minded people. The web allows searchers to define their targeting. This means that targeted websites, solutions, and personalities can create exceptional value for being news filters and creating useful targeted channels based upon the needs of similar people.

Contextual advertising such as Google AdSense can automate the ad sales to where all you have to do is pour your effort into learning about solutions to your problems and have income automatically deposited in your account.

Whatever sets you apart or makes you different can also be leveraged to make you wealthy if you have adequate interest in those topics. The web makes it possible for "small" people to start with nothing and work their way to notoriety or financial stability while avoiding the rat race that is corporate America.

Sometimes though if your productivity is driven out of hatred, or fear, or something negative it may be hard to shift those gears to positive motivation once you start to do well, and eventually you have to if you want to do well longterm. A friend of mine recently gave me a link to a killer poem, which is so much more than that.

John Battelle tells the story about Bill Gross's arbitrage candy selling as a kid, and how he later came to form GoTo, which pioneered the underlying business model that currently powers search.

I heavily practiced arbitrage with baseball cards when I was young. Below is my arbitrage story.
When I was 10 I remember this one guy had a game where it costed 50 cents to roll dice and win the prize. I kept landing packs of the first run 1990 Donruss baseball cards with the Harold Baines reverse negative and other error cards. I kept selling the packs for $3 - $5 to other dealiers, to go back and do more rolling. By the time the day was done I had a Tony Gwynn rookie, a Brett Saberhagan rookie, and about a couple hundred dollars worth of other cards from $5 spent on the roll a dice game.

Around the same time I remember buying Score Dream Team cards in bulk near book price and selling them to a dealer two tables over for double book price.

In high school I started selling baseball cards. I would buy cards out of people's 3 for a dime and quarter boxes and sell the cards for $1 each. It was an easy sell to have a huge case full of cards worth 25 cents to $4 each and organize them by player and just price them all at $1 each. It allowed people who did not collect baseball cards to start buying their favorite player at my table.

Sorry for the tangent...arbitrage is such a yummy topic. I don't collect baseball cards much anymore, but those are some fond childhood memories :)