and why they a waste of time...

out of 50 or so SEO requests over the course of a year...

1. at least 50% of them were other SEO companies looking to see what the industry pricing was (IE: Abuse of the system).

2. 25% of them were looking for the cheapist price in the world... like SEO for 100 bucks a month type thing...
3. 20% of them were people that were looking for detailed SEO proposals so they could do the work themselves..
4. 5% of them were real... and each of them had at least 30 Responses to their RFQ for a 500 buck a month or more project.

   With the time it takes to answer an RFQ (few hours per RFQ).. I could of done better just talking to people I know would need SEO work done IE: any site that collects money on the internet

Needed:
Danny Sullivan writes Worthless Shady Criminals: A Defense Of SEO

Decry a particular SEO tactic, if you want -- but don't decry the entire SEM industry as being rotten. If you want to do that, then here are some other stereotypes you'd also better buy into:

• All car salesmen are crooks

• All lawyers are crooks
• Teachers teach because they can't do
  
• Bloggers don't check facts

• [Insert Race/Culture/Nationality Here] is [Insert Derogatory Comment/Stereotype Here]

Ask Jeeves:
Profits increase 35%

Yahoo!:
Think Big contest gives away 10,000,000 Yahoo! ad impressions. I think Jeremy Z should win with the Viagra Rolex Watches.

Yahoo! also thinks small. Cutting up ads on stored My Yahoo! web pages. Webmasters are already complaining about how My Yahoo! stores web pages.

Charity:
Google foundation may invest in for-profit firms. Am going to apply for a grant soon. Will let you know how it goes :)

I don't really sell SEO services because they are time consuming and I am bad at pricing them.

Today I chatted with one of my friends about marketing their SEO firm. Many SEO firms spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars renting links each month, but otherwise remain somewhat anonymous.

Small Sale Steps:
With advertising they may rank great and get in front of a target audience, but after the audience finds the site it might make sense if there is an added step between finding a site and buy services. If you sell quality services they are usually going to cost a good sum of money. It is a huge leap of faith for a person to sign on from finding you in the search results.
Research Notorious Salesmen:
This added step could further sell the client on you and prequalify them to meet what you are looking for in a client. I pretended I was interested in signing up for Cory Rudl's mentorship program because I wanted to see how they sold it.

There are lots of issues that make the mentorship program not appealing to me, but do you know how they did the sales calls?

Prequalify:
They were not sold to me as sales pitches. They were sold as interviews to see if I was qualified for the program.

The whole time they were reminding me that they only wanted success stories. They were not willing to take me on unless I was serious. My first interview was to prequalify me for a second interview. The second interviewer normally is not available for a week or two, but surprise surprise they just happened to be available 15 minutes after my first interview was over. Why? They wanted to convert what they thought was a hot lead.

Remove Doubt:
They reminded me the for common things that held people back:

• time - a reminder that it takes time to see results and people should not be willing to give up quickly. Also a reminder that I would need to invest many hours of time into the program to see successful results. I would need to have time set aside.

• money - they reminded me that I could take out loans, but that usually credit cards made it easier to get started right away. As a new unproven business is easier to get credit from credit card company than to apply for a loan.
• knowledge - That is what the mentorship was supposed to provide me.
• fear - It is an uncertain world. Some people fear success. Some people fear failure. By making the mentorship program seem overtly logical by addressing the above concerns they wanted to reinforce that I was making a good choice and there was no reason for fear.

Of course when I backed off when it came time to enter my credit card details they became even more aggressive in the hard sales pitch techniques. I said I had to talk to a friend and they said that I should respect my own thoughts and opinions. They said that I should put my own future and my business in my own hands. I agreed with them and that is why I told them to let me think about it for a while.

People buying SEO services likely share some of the concerns as people buying a marketing mentorship program. There are also a few others, but some of the most common questions might be easily packagable as downloadable PDF. To prospects sometimes the format of information can matter as much or more than the actual contents of the container.

Things that are under $100 (and especially things that are under $50) can be an impulse buy. The right kind of SEO client is typically not the kind who is doing impulse buying.

Anonymity Problems:
The web makes it easy to research about a person or business, but most of the time the people turn up as anonymous. Most websites have some degree of fraud to them.

Competitive Research:
Most internet marketing techniques are fairly transparent.

• Look at competing sites. How do they market on their sites.

• Look at competign backlinks. How do they market via links.
• Use Alexa. If you can afford it collect more data via HitWise.
• Create seed sites in various industries. Have an auto insurance site that you market on AdWords or Overture.
• Ask questions to friendly competitors.
• Call or have a friend call other competitors as a prospective lead.
• Ask for proposal documents.

Doing some of those might help show you where others are doing well, and then again the might do well in spite of, not because some of the action. Then maybe there are additional things you could do that most firms are not.

Being Human:
Some things firms could do to bridge the credibility gap beyond what algorithms say:

• Write a bunch of articles and publish them on various sites.

• Get interviewed by others.
• Give away something.
• Act your size. A large corporate account might bring in a ton of money, but they may suck up most your resources and have a ton of red tape.
• Do not be afraid to put a personality into what you do.
• Look for clients with common interests. Maybe there is some pent up demand in the local area?
• Lots of other ideas. My friend came up with a great one, but I don't want to share it because its his idea. Hopefully he gives it a shot. :)

[disclaimer: I might be out to lunch here, but the intent of the post is to help...]

Why did Adobe Buy MacroMedia?
all the reasons. no spin.

Algorithms & Patents & Spam, oh My:
Yahoo!'s Concept Network & SuperUnits

Is NickW for Blog Spam?
certainly not, when its done sloppily to one of his blogs ;)

The Wrong Tail:
people are starting to use The Long Tail without purpose. better get that book printed quick.

Yahoo! Buys TeRespondo.com:
a good post from Nacho.

New Blog:
O'Reilly Radar

New Browser:
Opera 8 Launched

Media Futures:
Media Futures, Part 1/5: AUTOMATA

Internet Advertising:
A decade in Online Advertising (PDF) - report by DoubleClick, who may get bought out soon. found on Lee's blog

Wanna Park?
viral marketing at its best: I Park Like an Idiot

I have read Seth Godin's blog consistantly for the past year. I also believe I have read every book that he has wrote in the 5 years. I even went to his office one day to hang out. In the past he has made some comments about SEO which were a bit off mark, but in the end I agree that for most people SEO is not going to be a long term business model. If you really know your stuff well you might be able to get by just doing SEO, but for some people that will eventually get old. Technology will continue to advance. SEO can enhance distribution but if SEO and selling stuff cheap are your longterm brand strategy you could be making more money creating legitimate value for a growing social network which may eventually market your products for you.

Seth is a smart marketer and knows that on the web it is virtually impossible to give away too many good ideas. Stuntdubl just spent a day in Seth's office, and from his post and an IM chat he said it was great.

A few things you really learn when you visit hyper successful people who are still down to Earth:

• You don't need a suit to do well.

• Hard work does pay off.
• More than you realized you probably share a lot in common with that successful person.
• Being successful does not have to change who you are.
• Many of the people who are successful in your field may be more successful primarily based on past experience or time in the field.
• It is more lucrative being yourself then acting a part.

How does this relate to SEO?

1.) SEO Software:

I recently read a book which recommended a decent SEO tool and appoligized for mentioning it due to sleeze sales copy.

I recently tried another SEO tool, which has recurring monthly fees. The tips newsletter immediately offered me a special deal not promoted on the site - some Cory Rudl affiliate links. I even replied to the person to tell them that I thought it was sleeze.

If you are charging me a healthy recurring subscription on a low cost system do you need to sleeze upsell me? Is an extra $4 a month worth me not wanting to recommend your software? Worse yet, the how to manual for the SEO tool had three pages reminding readers how they can become rich reselling the software. Gross.

[disclaimer: within my sites I market my ebook heavily, but as time passes my sales letter will probably become more and more soft sell. My end goal is to be able to have no need to have a sales letter, but that might still be a bit down the road. ]

2.) Consulting & Services:

As a consultant or person working in a related field the best position to be in is to have more leads than you can possibly use. That way you get to chose what hours you work, set your prices, pick your clients, etc.

By not being a hard seller you miss out on some sales, but it also helps to build trust if you don't immediately go for a hard sell. Taking time to review things and build a relationship you are less likely to waste effort trying to sell to a person who is not interested in buying.

I think Jill Whalen has worked rather hard at developing a soft sell system which lets her pick and chose who she wants to work with.

3.) business meetings:

When I go to SES or related conferences many people are like "do you have a business card?", and I never do.

In that situation I look stupid, confident, or both. If you want to remember me that is great, if not I don't want to be another card in the stack.

Sure you want to build relationships over time, but if you give a few hundred people your card you might get a couple leads out of it. I have a huge stack of business cards and know few of the people.

As long as you appoligize for any mistakes you make or any inconvenience you cause someone they will probably think better of you than if everything just went smoothly off the start.

The added effort to get or give someones data without convenient little cards makes it more personal. If you want to remember me I probably do not need a card.

If you don't have cards and chose to meet a few people really well you might be better off as you will likely stick out a bit more than the average card in the stack.

[disclaimer 2: I might be full of crap, but these are my opinions, and I am sharing them. Please let me know what you think of them in the comments below]