Search Marketing Expo in Seattle

That's right! I'm off to SMX Advanced in Seattle Monday and Tuesday of next week.
I'm looking forward to meeting the top names in SEO including Danny Sulivan, Matt Cutts and Aaron Wall.

The content looks excellent and I'm happy to be attending an event that focuses on the non-basic / entry level stuff.

Should be a blast! Stay tuned for an update next week!

Build to flip

A site I have been following closely of late is www.tropicalseo.com by Andy Hagens.
Andy is a noted search engine optimization consultant who just hung up his consultant spurs in favor of building sites to flip.

With Vancouver real estate prices being what they are after the last heat up, an alternative that is becoming more and more attractive is finding underdeveloped websites and building them up to sell. Andy has several great posts on this topic and has suggested in the past that this is the way to go rather than spending time consulting.

Another, related site worth checking out is secondlife.com.
Second Life is a virtual world where over 6 million people lead second lives. While I'm not going to do a review of Second life and all of its many business uses (just Google it!) I recently heard the world has produced its first virtual real estate millionaire, millionaire in real terms of USDs.

Crazy stuff...perhaps I'm in the wrong business? :)

Online Reputation Management

A new post on online reputation management. Check it out.

Make money by blogging...big time

This post stems from a question a reader had about making money by writing online.
A few of the top ways to earn income from blogging that I have come across include:

• affiliate sales (you sell products for another company and earn a cut)
  
• ebook sales
• indirect sales via consulting and speaking
  
• advertising
• programs such as Google Adwords
• paid text links
• sponsored links and banners

For a great post on the topic (more comprehensive), visit this post by advertisespace.com

If you're interested in writing as a source of income and want to get your feet wet in the realm of professional blogging here are two sites to check out:

http://www.johnchow.com One of the more popular blogs on the net
http://www.problogger.net Australian Pro Blogger Darren Rowse runs one of the best blogs I've come across about making money blogging.

The links above should give you a good start.

PS: if you've checked out the links above and aren't sure what to do next, sign up for a free blog at www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.org

Webmaster World

If you're interested in programming, search engine optimization, website creation and management and just about anything under the sun to do with the www, check out: Web Master World

5 Reasons Why You Don't Need to Market Your Business Online

Why Online Marketing is Not for Everyone

A thought occurred to me today while thinking about the ways in which businesses go about finding customers online: not everyone cares about marketing or has a need for it.

Marketing types may disagree, but here are 5 reasons why you don't need online marketing services:

1. You have more business than you can handle
2. You have no desire to reduce your cost of acquiring customers
3. You are maintaining rather than growing your business
4. You do not see a reason to generate a measurable return on your marketing dollars
5. You believe your clients won't use the Internet for anything related to your business

In my work with independent professionals and small/medium sized companies I often here objections like the ones above.

Strange as it may sound, I actually agree with some of the people I come across who say that they have no need to market online. If a company has no desire to grow, it has no need to promote itself.

Of course, if that's the case, time and competition will result in the inevitable....