As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this ‘bad economy’ is a great time for your business to grow.  The down times are causing people to scale back on necessities, and the government is hoping that their new stimulus package will help some small businesses continue to operate.

As part of the stimulus package, the government has also increased the amount that a business can expense (section 179).  This one-year exception means that if you buy business stuff (a van, a computer, some new software) you can write off a larger chunk of that up front, which will help come time that Uncle Sam visits you again in April.

I’m not a tax expert, so do some research on the section 179 details.

This is a great time for small businesses to get their fannies in gear in relation to online presence.  I’m not going to rehash what I said earlier, but man what an opportunity!  Cut back on those Yellow Pages ads and push that money into your Internet plans.  You won’t be sorry.

“Can I just pay a couple of months now? We can’t afford to do the whole year at once”

Sometimes my hosting business gets requests to extend a hosting account just a month or two.  I’ve always accommodated these requests, as I can understand money can be tight.

However recently I’ve had two instances where people have requested an extension (and they’ve paid their $9 bucks or whatever it is) just to move hosts.  They had planned all along to do so, and just needed a little more time to do so.

Well, no more extensions.  From now on you pay for a year or I terminate the account.

What is that saying, lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part?  Something like that…

Many people stumble across SEM and think that it’s too hard, or too saturated to make any real money.  After a few months of pushing through something you’re probably not really interested in, you give up.  Small checks come, but it’s not the big payday you thought you’d get.

Well I’m here to tell you that hard work and persistence pays off.

In October 2004 when I stumbled across an Internet Marketing ebook, I started promoting timeshares, lemon laws, and teleconferencing.  None of them ever paid, but I kept at it.

In Feb 2005 I met Derek Chew, then a self employed (and single) SEO.  We hit it off, and I mentioned to him that I was averaging $5/day between Adsense and the few little things I was trying to promote.

Cutting to the chase, I’m now averaging over $3000 a month in side money.  That’s right, I’m still working part time on an Army web design contract, which provides me a nice steady income, and making that money on the side.  I recently bought my wife a nice GMC Denali and have my eye on a Cadillac STS.

If some country boy from Arnold MO can do it, so can you.

Last night my wife and I went to the Three Doors Down concert at the local outdoor amphitheater. The venue has some under-roof seating, but the vast majority of the seating is on the lawn, a huge grass-covered hill where you can just pick out a place, flip out a blanket, and sit.

You can also rent lawn chairs. After about 15 minutes of sitting on a blanket, my back was hurting and I was ready for a chair. So we walked all the way back down the hill (about 10 mins) and scoped out the rental place.

I noticed the sign right away - Lawn Chair Rental $5. Excellent. Five bucks. I can handle that.

So we go up there and hand over the $5 bucks. I get a chair and a ticket. The lady explains to me that if I bring the chair back, along with the ticket, I’ll get a dollar back.

Wow, really? I can walk all this way back for a dollar?

If you’ve read the book Freakonomics, you’ll remember a story about daycares in Israel that were having problems with parents picking up their children late. So the daycare decided to issue a ‘late penalty fee’ of $3.00. And what happened? The amount of late arrivals increased dramatically. The parents realized that for only $3/day, they could extend the time they had without the kids to get things done. The daycare’s plan backfired.

Same for the lawn chair. I had walked up there fully expecting to pay $5 for a rental. Once there, they informed me of the deposit return, but instead I heard “For no extra money, you can leave your chair on the hill after the show”. They just saved me from walking all the way back over there, thanks.

So in my little marketing mind, I started thinking about things they could do that could actually work. We know the chair rental really costs them nothing, other than the initial purchase price of the chair, which I’m sure they recouped in the first two shows of the season. That means the other 100 or so shows are pure profit, minus having to pay the girls that man the rental booth. So let’s just say the profit per chair per concert is $4.50.

There are many businesses who would love to get the exposure of thousands of people nearly every night of the summer. These businesses would be wise to contact the lawn chair rental place and work out a deal. For example’s sake, lets say I own a sandwich shop near the ampitheater. I could print up some buy-one-get-one sandwich coupons, and give them to the lawn chair rental booth (up to $5 value). Now the booth can promote something of more value for each returned chair, a free $5 sandwich, making the rental “free”.

They’d do even better if they got a few vendors to offer deals. A local nightclub/bar would do well after most concerts. A free bucket with purchase of a bucket would pull people in. A skate shop (for the teen visitors) could offer a $5 discount off shoes. Dave & Busters (which is very near the amphitheater) could offer $5 in free tokens.

Even if the lawn chair company paid $1 for each coupon, they’d still come out was ahead.

Be careful how you portray ‘value’ to your customers. I was fully willing to pay $5 to rent a chair, and when I found out that I could just leave it, and didn’t have to bring it back, it was even better. I was in no way notified of the $1 ‘refund’ until I had already paid for the rental.

A ten minute walk with an already-hurting back vs. a $1 refund was an easy decision. Someone come get this chair. I’m going home.

Many of my readers wonder if they’ll ever get to the point where they’re making a decent income from their online affiliate programs. Well, I’m here to tell you that yes there will be a day when you’ll be able to quit your ‘regular’ job and live off the income that your websites take.

I started doing Internet marketing in 2006. I had no idea what I was doing. I bought an ebook (no longer available) and was inspired to give it a whack. I made some MFA pages and after several months got to about $5/day.

That sucked. But it was enough to keep me motivated.

Two years later and I’m pulling in a nice set of checks each month. Usually I deposit them and put most of the money back into my business, and I spend some on the kids.

But this month I thought I’d treat myself. And I did.

That’s me this past weekend on a 57 foot charter boat off the coast of Alabama. I’m fighting an Amber Jack and eventually I win.

I took my 15 year old son, left Friday, rented a nice apartment on Dauphin Island, and drove back on Monday. The entire 4-day trip was paid for with just two checks from affiliate marketing. It was awesome.

So for you that are wondering if you’ll get there, you will. Stick with it, learn some search optimization for your website, build links and you’ll have checks bigger than mine. Then you can tell me about your adventure.

I’ve posted a contest over at 99designs.com and I’m inviting you to submit your best work. Winner gets $300 bucks.

But even better, if your design is selected as the winner, there is a very good chance that I’ll have more and more work for you - work that will be offered exclusively to you first.

My last graphic designer wasn’t reliable, so I had to fire him. Are you reliable and good at what you do? Here’s your chance to make money- both now and in the future.

About two weeks ago I received an email from a lady who took one of my classes about two years ago. She was looking for a website redesign for her employer.

Well, I put together a nice proposal and emailed it off to her. For two weeks I didn’t hear anything. Then yesterday comes this email:

Will,
We have decided to go with a bid from another web company because of the time frame they can provide. Over the last two weeks, we’ve realized we need our website “yesterday”. Your pricing and other items were right in line with the other bid, but we decided to go with them because of our timeline.

Umm, ok. My response (once I calmed down from the sheer stupidity of the scenario):

Hi X,
Congratulations on your selection of a designer for your website! I personally would never build and launch a website in two weeks. I don’t think it would be fair to my clients. Nonetheless, I wish you luck (blah blah blah)

I ran the response past my PR team (aka my wife) and verified that it wasn’t a smartass reply. I didn’t want to come across that way, but rather let them know that I create quality, and I can’t create quality in a matter of two weeks.

Sure, I could throw together a website in a few days. Any web designer could. But it wouldn’t be optimized for search engines. In fact, I’d be willing to bet the ‘winning bidder’ won’t even put meta descriptions and keyword-targeted titles on each page. Heck, that’s the easy part, but I bet they don’t.

If you’re serious about building a website, you need to take the time to get more than pretty colors on a page.  You need to sit down and think about how you’ll market your site.  Will the site simply be a brochure, or will it be a full-out marketing machine, ready to suck in customers and spit out revenue?

If you’re not serious about a website, just pick any two and I’ll get started on it.

• Good
• Fast
• Cheap

This post is the part two followup to The Invisible SEO.

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while, and finally have a few minutes to post my thoughts on the ever-rising cost of SEO.

Diane Aull did a great piece yesterday over on SearchEngineGuide called “Why do the (good) SEOs cost so %&*# much? She had a good story about a maintenance man that knew just what to do, and where.  It’s a good read.

Now, as I mentioned last week, I listened to the SEO 101 webinar from HubSpot, and in particular I wanted to hear what the guy had to say about finding a good SEO.  I’ve already complained about him saying a good SEO should rank, so its time for me to bitch about the other thing I didn’t agree with him about - price.

Mike says: “Any good SEO that is worth their salt, the majority of them are going to be more than $2000 a month.”  He goes on to add, “and anyone who’s only a couple hundred dollars a month… doesn’t provide a good value for the money”.

Wrong!

While I agree, $2000 a month is probably a good number for decent sized small businesses, it’s not fair to use it as a generic baseline.  There are many factors involved in each business that determines this amount.

SEOMoz said they won’t take a client for less than $10k a month.  They have a great staff that can handle large accounts, and can dedicate staff to each project to make sure their clients get the value they are paying for.

Not-so-prominent SEOs such as myself don’t (or can’t) hold themselves to such standards, and still be able to eat each night.  While sure, I’d love to get me a few $10k accounts, I must continue to live in the real world.  And my world is full of small business with small budgets that want to grow.  And I’m just the guy to help them do it.

I have a small business client who I just took on recently who rents out those cool bounce houses that every 35 year old wishes existed twenty years ago (where were they!?).  This client doesn’t have a big budget. And to add to that, she has a short window of time when these things can even be rented out (who wants to bounce while it’s snowing? Not me.). So its fair to say she’s not going to spend $2000 a month right away on SEO. And that’s ok with me.

So for a few months we’ll do what she can afford, and we’ll reassess the situation then.  Spring will be chugging along, and (if I’m doing my job) her business will be well. Perfect. Now she has the opportunity to adjust her budget and do a full-court press the rest of the summer. We both win.

I end up with a client that is spending a nice amount of money for my services, and her business is growing (and ranking).  Had a told her upfront that there was a $2000 entry fee, I’d have never made a dime.

Now, I should also mention that I am selective about the clients I take on.  Some clients just want it all, and they want it all for under $500 bucks.

It ain’t happenin’.

I’ve got ‘buddies’ who are willing to put up with these types of clients, so I’ll just pass them on.  Headache avoided, friends fed.

But $2000 or they are “worthless SEOs”? I don’t agree.