Where did you get the $30,000 per month figure? Is that 90% of your personal income or did Shoemoney indicate he was making $33,000 per month?????
I agree with the general theme of what Jill is saying and don't believe that reciprical linking is a necessary ingredient in SEO. But will not (usually) hurt you. One-way relevant ibl's from authority sites with minimal obl's would still have to carry much more weight, IMO. As far as SEO. To me, it's just a big game without ANY real rules or guidelines etched in stone. Those that hang out in places like this and read threads like this, regularly, are probably the best SEO service on the planet. I have never purchased the services of an SEO firm, but rather learn all I can and play the game. But your se positioning cannot be something you're dependant on. I cannot argue this point either. Although a clever blend of the 2 won't hurt
shoe moenys income, well not actually he never specified the amount spent on adwords or other advertisng to create that income
$30k isn't too hard/month. But once you figure in expenses such as office rent, utilities, miscellaneous stuff, salary, etc it really disappears rather quickly. My e-comm sites get me about $80k/month in sales, about 1/2 of that I keep after COGS, but it goes away rather quickly LOL. Its really a balancing act - how much work are you comfortable with before you need to take on employees. I have a limit of amount I can do without an employee. I am at it, so I don't try too hard to get more. More trouble than its worth IMHO. Expecting to make $30-40k/month without putting out about 1/2 that is a little unrealistic, IMHO. I figure for every 1 dollar you make, 50 cents should go back into growing the business or making sure it stays at a certain level.
Just started reading this thread with interest...seems to be a fun bashfest. Five years ago everyone hated SUVs, now it's SEO's. I've said it before...most business owners haven't a clue, OR the time to work on their own websites...So they hire people such as designers, copywriters, and seo folks. If they didn't find these services of value they wouldn't pay for them, nor would there be a buzz about it. Every industry has it's 'pros' and in most places it's simply because they've got the biggest egos and/or pr budgets. Business is business is business. Rating them wouldn't do much as it doesn't matter if the everyday person loves, hates, or stalks them....it only matters that their client's view the project paid for as a success. I agree that it's tough for most ecommerce sites to compete, but I still think there are other ways to gain inbound links then just doing recip exchanges. In the long run just doing recip exchanges won't help much, the horse still might not buy from you even if you've got great rankings. If you take the time to build a brand through running promotions and public relations (often very low cost) you'll get much more value in the long run. It just takes a bit of creativity. Seems to me that there are just as many scammy web designers as they are seo companies but you don't see everyone saying the graphic design industry is hogwash!
what is "cogs"? I need to come up with some other stuff to invest in, I have been becoming stagnent, or dead by using your figures. I spend pretty little each month, like maybe 1/8 of what my gross is . I better go to go daddy to buy some more domains
Cost Of Goods Sold. Gross profit is sales revenue minus COGS. COGS does not normally include expenses like heat and light etc. But it depends how your accounting is set up.
This industry is no different than any other - there are good companies/individuals and there are assholes just out make a buck with no consideration for the customer.
I have about 1k a month in server expenses to run my website(s). My traffic comes from people who actually use the services I offer (I know that sounds crazy but it works!). The find my site by word of mouth, brand recognition, or search engines. I rank very high for alot of keywords and the site is not very old it just is very popular and people link to it. I actually get more search hits for variants of my brand then I do for the keyword that I am ranked #1 for on all search engines. (branding 4tw!) Currently 90% of my income comes from adsense but normally user subscription is most of my income. I dont really want to be specific about what I make honestly but I will say I have made more in the last 7 days off of adsense then the first 25 years of my life COMBINED and I wasnt unemployed much during that time 15-25 anyway. Since finding digitalpoint and reading I have implemented some seo (title pages, mod_rewrite, dynamic meta tags) and even bought some links/sites but havent spent too much perhaps 10k total or so. Its a total learning experience for me. I just chucked down about 6k for me and my business manager to goto the seo confrence but I think I learned more from Chachi in one day then all the "top experts" at the confrence all week. I am just the rare guy out there that built something that brought traffic... threw some ads on it... now I am here trying to figure out HOW it works. Like Shawn I to am baffled as to the success because I had never tried to build a site for money... I just built a site with tools I used and shared them with other people. I am baffled everyday when I see 30-40 new paying donation based subscriptions when all the tools I offer are completely free yet people still want to donate. I dont think a site needs much seo to be successful. I will take a quality site that offeres services and enhances a user experience so it travels by word of mouth and brand recognition ANY DAY over one that is seo'd to death yet just has the same crap you see everywhere else.