Not something I know much about yet, but recently there have been a number of good posts on buying and selling domains.

• 
  ShoeMoney: My tips for buying domains that are taken

• ShoeMoney: Whats my domain worth and how do I handle the sale?
• Jim Boykin had a few good domain buying comments on this post.

One of the best things I ever learned in the navy was troubleshooting and half splitting problems into smaller possible problems. I recently did a bit of microspamming stuff to see what would get nailed and what would not, although I have only tested like 0.0000001% of the market. I want to start focusing more of my efforts on learning how to become a scientific SEO.

I have not built a ton of for profit sites yet, but the likes of Andy Hagans and a few of my other friends have been wearing me down into becoming more of a blog overlord / many for profit site owner.

There are really two main ways to do SEO:

• Manually: Create world class content that is published frequently.

• Automated: Buy and/or build sites that look good to search algorithms and search reviewers even if they are a bit automated.

People tend to dismiss the word automation as meaning it has to be spam, but I can't tell you how many times I have heard people like Mikkel talk about how many of the most popular websites are heavily automated.

Google, Google News, Digg, and Memeorandum are a few of the many automated sites I generate on a daily basis. I also think it is pretty hypocritical for those creating automated websites to push the image of automation as being associated with spam.

I guess the ultimate goal to create a money printing machine would be to create content that is:

• useful and value added (needs to pass the Turing Test and be citation, bookmark, and subscription worthy)

• unique (so duplicate content filters do not catch it)
• profitable
• nearly 100% automated

I am pretty much starting from scratch on the above autogen idea, but friends have left me tips here and there. I hired a cool programmer who is working away at creating value added websites. It should be fun.

In some areas I am partnered with friends who are all about making money, but as much as anything I want to watch and understand how search evolves on many levels. You really can't be a true scientific SEO unless you have some automated content you are working with.

Mike Grehan replied to the wide array of public criticism he received from his latest ClickZ article. In his reply he mentioned that he thought SEO moved from keywords in content to linkage data and that it was moving from links to user data.

So long as you have a channel with decent reach I think it is easier to induce end user activity than it is to induce trusted link popularity. If search engines heavily go in that direction I am so in the money.

They may want to trust user data more because it is harder for web marketers to track user data streams than link popularity, and entry costs to gain influence - in time and/or effort - exceed what most people would be interested in spending.

Mike gave this example for inducing user data:

What about, we give away a discount coupon to everyone on our mailing list (which as a large company may be sizable).

But, instead of putting a link to a promotional web page on the site, we cut and paste a link for a search on Google for brand+product. And instead of using "click here to get your token" as the call to action, we use "Just Google us and click through for your coupon."

His article is top shelf (although his Blogger template is hosed it is still well worth the effort to read).

Some other ideas to induce user data:

• write articles that are intentionally vague or easy to take in an offensive way such that it builds a controversy around your name

• create contests or other ideas that have some shifty sounding rules to create controversy
• hijack others news or ideas by turning them into a controversy to share in the limelight
• if you see viral ideas spreading throw chips in early to try to ride it out
• write posts about emerging social networks or publishing formats and business models, perhaps saying how new ones will kill old ones
• be aggressive in writing about ideas that are spreading quickly
• advertise everywhere to where your ads become so annoyingly overexposed that people end up writing about the topic
• take the contrarian view
• be outright offensive
• get sued
• create a new word or define the meaning to commonly used industry jargon
• if you are a blogger use Technorati tags
• add links to make it easy to tag your site (via Del.icio.us or Digg or Reddit)... I so need to get on the ball with that

A couple ideas I included in this blog for probably well over a year:

• Search the Search Engines for "title of my page"

• Buy the industry standard #1 ranked SEO Book. What do the search engines think? Google Search: SEO Book (#1)

One thing that is a bit of a let down is that most things that go really viral are typically ubber hyped. I like the idea of organic marketing, but the line between strong marketing and pure hype gets thin when one needs to be profitable in a competitive distributed network market...and I may eventually find myself heavily becoming a hype guy.

Not sure how much weight will end up being placed on user data or how heavily it will effect the phrase "you are not going to believe what I read today" but I am already using that phrase. ;)

SEO Question: I am new to the seo world..however I am veteran the ________ digital marketing space. There is a ton of opprotunity in the ________ space in regrads to PPC. I want to start a consulting firm for ___ sellers and help them shift their ad bugets to PPC. I would like you're advice on starting a company like this.

SEO Answer: As far as getting your feet wet in SEO/SEM go to some of the conferences. Search Engine Strategies and WebmasterWorld World of Search are the two largest, but you can often do well going to local ones because it may be easier to access some of the players there. There is a small conference in Dallas Fort Worth next Monday, for example.

If you already have great industry related authority or reputation then it should be easy to add the new services to your umbrella of offerings.

Call up some of the people who really know and trust you. Maybe try to add on the PPC services at no obligation to them to see if they like them. Offer them a free test campaign as a deal to a friend.

A low hanging fruit technique is to come out with a study that says how the ______ industry is screwing up PPC. Make it sound like you were absolutely shocked when you discovered that 82% of ____ companies were not even doing PPC, and that the other 17% were doing it sloppily (this probably works well for regional or topical targeting).

If you can using stats from companies like Nielson NetRatings, ComScore, and Hitwise may make your sales pitch sound more like legitimate research. You then want to try to get your research published on sites like DMNews and Clickz if possible.

Sometimes people are not using PPC and other times they have horrific targeting. You can either create one massive report or create a monthly state of the industry report.

I think Fathom Online shows monthly click prices by industry in their Keyword Price Index. You can ball up that sort of data with some other ideas to create a monthly state of the industry newsletter. Perhaps also track how certain brands are mentioned in the news (a la Topix.net) or on blogs (Technorati, BlogPulse, etc.). Depending on your motivational level you may also want to run an industry related blog to send out that information and any other related thoughts on the industry that you wanted to express.

Another option might be use the Google AdWords API and other tools to not only create your own custom reports, but to also create a tool some people can use that attracts the right audience. Then use that site as a lead generator.

Really love the industry? Maybe it makes sense to create a portal or partner up with someone who has a large portal related to your industry. If need be, perhaps even partner with sites at minimal margins for yourself just to brand your name and leverage that market position. Eventually that should allow you to either take on smaller content partners and make a greater premium there, and/or allow you to sell more search ads.

An aggressive technique might be to buy underpriced ads where people in your industry should be and then link those ads through to a report on how they are not effeciently marketing (and how you can obviously help them).

Disclaimer: while being ok to good at blogging and SEO I don't have a lot of experience on the selling services biz front because I tend to underprice services and thus have been more focused on creating my own sites and content than working for others.

It's all about mindshare.

Over at Threadwatch Massa posted about how a friend's site quickly ranked in Google by spamming bathroom stalls with URL laden yellow stickies.

I'm not telling anyone to spam bathrooms. I'm merely making a point that maybe thinking differently and thinking in terms of something other than tech may offer some answers to this debate. I'm not sure putting up post-it notes in toilets is people marketing, but I'm also not sure it isn't search engine marketing.