Building Value on the Web

Tricks of the Trade

There are many SEO tricks which can help boost your rankings, but for the most part they are continuously changing. If you want to do search engine marketing for a living it might be worth it to learn them, but for the most part its not necessary to learn any tricks.

The General Business Cycle

For a business to create great wealth it first has to create great value. How I look at the internet is that I can read about and test things that interest me for a few thousand hours and then redistribute these ideas quick and free. If it is something I am interested in learning I tend to discount the value of my time since I am just learning what I want.

Many people want instant profits. Generally it is not possible to make long term profits which start today unless you are busy learning and building a reputation. Short term profits are possible, but my goal is long term.

Every week thousands of people glance at my site and hopefully can save a few minutes or hours. Thus the overall return is time saved. If I save someone time hopefully they will consider linking to me or telling their friend about me. My marketing power expands as third part votes add up.

Niche is Better

If you are starting a website as a hobby it is much easier to pick a smaller market to dominate. Some opposite examples:

Marketing is an extremely large category.

Internet marketing in an extremely large category.

Even search engine marketing is a fairly large category.

Some people have wanted to make an online Canadian pharmacy, which can generate tons of revenue. The problems with such an idea are:

It is a super competitive environment.

Many of your competitors will be spamming in various ways making junk link rings and throw away sites. By the time their current site gets penalized their newest site will already be competing with you.

The drug companies and doctors themselves will be directing traffic and sales.

Often times the person with this idea knows nothing about drugs.

Very rarely does this type of idea build any long term value.

A better idea is to pick a drug or disease and become the knowledge source for it. I prefer disease, since drugs have patents on them which eventually run out. Also, by only collecting data about a specific drug it will make your information biased. Information about a disease can be unbiased with the resulting solution for the problem promoted.

The Indirect Route

The road to profits is sometimes an easier path if you use an indirect route. Relative to the size of the web there are not many unbiased topical directories and resources. Those that do exist may sometimes be hard to find. Some even discredit themselves greatly by selling irrelevant ads. Simply put, its not that hard to be the best in a focused topic that interests you.

One of the biggest tips I have for most people is to write out what you know in a non commercial website. If you can place the text into small palatable chunks you can create articles which are not only well appreciated, but also easily syndicated. Using this knowledge base and the popularity it brings you will then allow you to more easily acquire links to your future slick conversion-geared website.

An Example

I actually have had a few of my articles from my site referenced by many other websites. Its usually not a good idea to tell people what your future plans are, but I will:

Another topic I am greatly interested in is mental health and more specifically depression. From what I have learned 5 HTP is an amazing supplement which can help people overcome depression. If you look at the 5HTP.com website you will see that Dr. Murray is a moron. He is advertising the 48 hour Hollywood diet at the bottom of his page. This move is killing his credibility.

Hunting for good 5HTP articles I have found there to only be about a dozen or so good ones which are easy to find in search engines.

Recently I have purchased a half dozen books on 5HTP and serotonin. After I get done reading the next 5 of them I will put my knowledge down in web format and be one of the top sources on the internet for 5HTP.

Becoming an Expert

For you to be able to really extract the desired profits people will need to view you as an expert. Having articles appear around the web will make you seem more like an expert. In addition having articles on other sites which link back to your home page in the tag line will give you topical authoritative inbound links.

It is human nature to be skeptical. If independent people say exceptionally kind comments about you (and publish your work) then it is easier to accept the comments as truth.

The biggest expense we all face in life is time. It is something that you can not recoup. If a person is willing to pay you $5 / hr they will likely be willing to pay $50 or $100 / hr. if you have proven that you can help save time.

The Payout

After you are well developed you can decide to change your focus. While it is a good idea to keep your content up to date you may decide that it would be better to distribute your information in a way that allows you to extract more profits.

You can create niche specific sites which drive people to the desired action. In addition you can reformat the knowledge or try new marketing schemes. After you are beyond self sustaining everything you do will only improve the future payout.

Eventually links just start showing up without you asking for them. When that happens it is a fair assumption that you are doing something really good (or really bad).

- by Aaron Wall, author of The SEOBook