You know, I continue to get email after email requesting a reciprocal link. I honestly do not know why people still do this. It is a strategy that is not very effective and to be honest, I believe it makes websites look sloppy. So I’ve basically sat down in front of my video recorder today and explained my thoughts on this issue. I hope you enjoy the video – I just hate these time wasting, useless and counter productive linking strategies.
This video also explains how to create backlinks to your website without wasting time, and mitigating the quality of your website, by using reciprocal linking strategies. You are welcome to embed this video on your own website/blog.
Many people ask me what a lifestyle business is, what I do and how it pertains to small and medium sized businesses (SMB). Here are the answers:
What is a Lifestyle Business
When I talk about a lifestyle business, it is more about your approach to business. Its all about work-life balance. Most people go to work to earn enough money to support themselves. Once they finish work, they have a small amount of time left in the day. Once they finish paying for their basic living expenses, they also have a small amount of money left. They then have the liberty to try and carve a lifestyle out of the small amout of time and money they have left after work and basic necessities are covered. Because their resources of time and money are scarce, they need to make some tough decisions – this is the opposite of the approach I am talking about.
A lifestyle business starts with what you want out of life. What are the parameters and requirements for your perfect lifestyle? A lifestyle business starts at this point and then creates a business model around these prerequisites. Time enhancement, money generation and portability typically become priorities in such model. When the business model is a success, it supports the owners lifestyle rather than consumes it.
Why A Lifestyle Business
The answer to this one is simple. Lifstyle businesses let you live your life on your own terms. You still get to help people, make a difference to others by providing a product or service of real value. But you do it on your own terms. And you do it in a way that puts the life of you and your family first, and ensures your business activities support your life values.
How Do Lifestyle Business Strategies Apply to SMB
The reason the strategies of lifestyle businesses are so readily applicable to SMBs are the goals of SMBs typically are very similar. Business owners of SMBs invariably created their businesses as they had a product or skill of real value they could market and they wanted to own their own destiny. Unfortunately and often, success in SMB means that the business owners get consumed by their businesses. They spend so much time in their business they cannot extract themselves to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
As the strategies of lifestyle businesses are all about automation and reducing time spent in the business, they are typically excellent strategies to offer the SMB business owner who cant see the end of any day, due to the burdens of his own creation.
My internet passion started back in 2003. A little eBook set me on the road, it was Google Cash by Chris Carpenter. I set up a few campaigns in a relatively competition free Australia and started making money directly promoting affiliate programs.
I watched as more and more people entered the market though, forcing click bids up. I watched while Google changed their rules, time and time again making it harder for affiliates to make money with pay per click. I watched and worked up to the point where the time involved in managing pay per click campaigns as an affiliate, was no longer worth the commissions the campaigns earned.
So I changed my approach. I started to build websites and learn about search engine optimisation. I still used PPC marketing, but to drive traffic to my own websites while they optimised in the organic search terms. The result for me was half a dozen highly optimised and profitable website businesses. Of these, only one has its own product. The others either promote affiliate programs or sell advertising space.
During this time, I have frequently been asked by small and medium sized businesses to help them with their internet marketing. I’ve never promoted myself in this way, they all came to me from word of mouth, referred to me from others I’ve done a good job for. The business owners who have come to me all had two things in common. First, they could see potential for their business on the internet. Second, their efforts had been frustrated by an unscrupulous and poorly skilled internet operator.
There is a real issue with the internet industry, it is packed with these bogus operators. There are graphic designers who put together internet masterpieces, charge a fortune for the website, yet no-one can find them. There are marketing professional who apply all their skills, yet they know nothing about the internet so their message doesn’t find an ear to fall on. Our industry is unregulated and we are largely self trained. Unfortunately this has left the industry open to the unscrupulous and ignorant. Our clients have been damaged and the industry suffers also.
Every week I see how these charlatans work. They prey on the assumption that their clients are ignorant. Despite the fact they know so little themselves, they assume their clients know less and therefore can be baffled with a few technical phrases and a pretty graph.
Gold Coast Surfboards is a great example to prove the point. This is my travel business. Its the only website I run to date which sells its own product, a long-term surfboard hire service. Do a Google search on Gold Coast Surfboard Hire. You can find me easily. Or even use the less specific search phrase Surfboard Hire. You’ll see how well this website is optimised in the search engines.
Despite this I get the so called “professionals” writing to me every week trying to sell me their SEO services. “We can put your business on steroids” they tell me, getting you on the first page of Google on such terms as “Surf Board Accessories” and “Holiday Rentals”.
I think I’ve figured out what these charlatans do. I think they find a small business website and mine the search engines for “sort of” related terms, until they find one which is pretty low on Google. For my website, the type of terms that they come up with are “Surf Accessories” and “Holiday Rentals”. Terms which are related but not really relevant. Once they have found one, they’ll construct a sales pitch based on the traffic they’ll send my website by optimising it for those terms. Of course there is always a decent amount of scare mongering in these sales pitches, telling me how much of my business is going to my competitors, business which I can claim for my own.
If I didn’t understand internet marketing, I may have used these charlatans. I’m sure many small businesses have been convinced by their slick presentations. And at the end of their work though, I would have a website which attracts completely irrelevant visitors. People looking for surf accessories or people looking to rent a hotel room, or car for their holiday. This probably would have undermined the optimisation work I did on “Surfboard Hire” and related terms as well, meaning my real clients would have gone to my competitors.
If you are under pressure from an internet salesman to sign up for their optimisation services, my advice is to first get a really good understanding from you clients, as to which search phrases they use on the internet when they are looking for your product. If the salesmen are trying to get you to optimise other phrases, don’t do business with them. At the very least they have not researched your market enough to work on your website. At its worse, they are just manipulating you in an attempt to wring some money out of you. Either way, it will damage your business.
If you are thinking about doing some work to your website but do not know where to start, ask around. The really good operators work on reputation and do little self promotion. When you do this though, be clear that you are looking for an internet marketer, not a designer or developer. Its one thing to make a masterpiece for the internet like many graphic designers do, but a whole new kettle of fish putting it where all your clients can find it.
If you are an internet professional reading this article, its time for all of us to smarten up. We need to look after the industry and we can only do this by being ethical in the manner in which we operate. So please, stop going out trying to extract a pound of flesh, go out to add value to your clients. Once you are adding value, the new clients will come, following your reputation. Continue operating as you are though and soon no-one will talk to internet professionals anywhere.
Damian Papworth, appalled by the lack of ethics in internet marketing, promotes ethics before profits.
