If you’re new to affiliate marketing, this may be a way to make a few hundred bucks a month for not much work. If you’re a big affiliate marketer and already have channels you can sell to, this may be a way to make tens of thousands of dollars a month without much work.

Advertising Agencies
Apartments
Architects
Assisted Living Facilities
Bed and Breakfasts
Carpet Cleaners
Computer Repair
Dentists
Dollar Stores
Drug Rehab Clinics
Eating Disorder Treatment
Executive Search Firms
Funeral Homes
Hobby Shops
Home Theater Installers
Internet Marketing
Jewelry Stores
Laundromats
Law Firms
Locksmiths
Public Relations
Realtors
Resorts
Restaurants
Self Storage
SEO / Search Engine Optimization
Skateboard Shops
Staffing Agencies
Temp Agencies
Triathlon Shops
Video Game Stores
Web Design
Web Development
Web Hosting

You might compare it to an “No Trespassing – Armed Response” sign on a fence bordering private property. Is the sign saying that if you trespass you’re a criminal? No, but it’s saying if you do trespass, the owner reserves the right to shoot at you with a gun, and you’ve been duly warned. Can Google’s TOS be taken in a similar light? That is, I can send automatic queries with a clear conscience, I just need to be aware that Google reserves the right to combat my activities in any way they see fit, and I’ve been duly warned of that fact? Or, when I visit their site, am I formally entering into a binding contract and giving my word to follow their TOS, any violation of which makes me a liar?

All I was doing was manually typing in some keyword searches, and bam! I got the screenshot you see below. The restriction lasted for about 20 minutes and now it works again, but not after seriously interrupting my work and making me wonder if it was going to take hours, days, or weeks to sort out. I guess the way I was typing in my searches must have coincided perfectly with some algorithm they have for detecting automatic queries. Well Google, I guess you have a ways to go.

hiee dis is [name withheld to protect the silly] n i hav got over 4 years of experience in Internet mktg n in overall SEO n SEM operations? n wud like to serve u people with my efforts? M luking for any work at home opportunities Related with the SEO n SEM operations, Or anything related with an Internet Marketing, n when i works, u can c the results ASAP, I know exactly, how to improve the website’s Rank Rapidly n quickly on search engines, cos I hav got the Creative ideas n diff n innovative techniques by which We can deliver tons of traffic everyday to any website. so i can ensure the quality work for u people? So for further details u can hav a luk to my CV In Attachment. hope n wish to hear positive frm u people Thanx Regards [name]

I don’t like to make fun of people, so I held onto this email for a few days, but then I decided it was just too good to not share.

Yeah, stupid. I’ve found when you make a mistake the best thing to do is to own up to it, and then find something interesting you can learn from it. Aside from learning to check the stats on my blog more than once every three months, I’ve also learned that the robots.txt file actually works. Yeah, in fact it works really, really well. This graphic says it all:

That’s what happens when your robots.txt settings look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Not all that different than:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Wouldn’t you say? But it’s quite different. It’s the difference between having your site almost completely de-indexed or having your site indexing marvelously. So kids, learn from my mistake and don’t do this at home, at work, or anywhere else unless you actually want to avoid the search engines.

The first thought that occurred to me is that perhaps it’s some sort of automated spam that causes these types of results to appear in the analytics for countless websites, and then people like me actually start searching for “sedat yüksel”. The only flaw with this plan, if it is indeed the plan, is that when I searched for “sedat yüksel” it didn’t pull up anything meaningful. I can’t see why anyone would want to optimize for the keywords “sedat yüksel” or drive traffic to any of the sites that do come up for “sedat yüksel”.

I’ve had some other ideas as well, but they all break down when I try to figure out what the motivation would be unless it’s just good ol’ mischevious fun on behalf of some 14-year old hacker in Russia named Sedat Yüksel. Well, whatever the case, if you know what Sedat Yüksel is up to, if it’s a person, or if sedat yüksel is some sort of Slavic dish involving cabbage, let me know.

You see, I’m in a bit of a unique situation. I’ve got Domain A, and my associate has Domain B. My associate owns the content on Domain A, but wants to move it to Domain B, and then he wants me to 301 redirect Domain A to Domain B. But just temporarily. After two months, I’ll remove the 301 redirect from Domain A and will do with it as I please. However, my interest in Domain A is primarily based on its current value, which is substantial, and I’m concerned that after two months of 301 redirecting it elsewhere that the value will have disappaited like so many programmers around the continental breakfast table at a conference once the muffins run out.

So, if anyone has the definitive answer to my question, I’d love to hear it. If not, I’ll probably take the risk just to find out what happens, and then report back here upon completion of the experiment.

Take billboards, for example. Prices vary, but in a decent urban area you’ll pay anywhere from $2K to $5K per month or more for a billboard. That’s about the same as what you would pay for a decent SEO campaign, but the SEO campaign excels in two ways; 1) you actually know what you’re getting (with a billboard you can only guess at the results unless you’re driving traffic to a unique phone number or website or using a code or something for tracking purposes), and 2) the billboard is only affecting a local audience, whereas SEO is national/global. Now, for a business that only sells locally, the billboard might be the better route, or at least a good option, but for a national company there’s no comparison between the value of SEO and a single billboard.

If you want to go national with advertising, you can look to radio, TV, phone books, magazines, and newspapers. But here you’re looking at astronomical costs. If you want to take out a full page ad in a national magazine with 100,000 subscribers you might pay tens of thousands of dollars. And that’s just to run your ad once. Again, that might be a good option, but you might get 12 months of SEO for the same price, and you can track the results better and you stand a good chance of getting more results.

I’m not saying SEO is better than everything else out there no matter what–different situations require different solutions. But when companies are looking to cut costs and can’t afford expensive advertising with dubious results, SEO logically must begin to look more and more attractive because of it’s higher potential for a positive ROI and easy-to-track results. What are your thoughts?