Slightly Shady SEO | Blackhat is Back, Baby.

I was talking to a few buddies that work in different aspects of internet marketing, and started debating with myself how much different skills within internet marketing cross over. For example, is it easier to become a mailer after excelling at PPC? Is it easier to do good at PPC after excelling at SEO? I’ve done all 3 now(though I’m still learning PPC), so I figure I can speak about this relatively accurately.

My Conclusion? Absolutely.

Internet Marketing(As I see it) Gets Broken Down into 3 Skills that Cross Over
I will cover these specific to each niche later in the entry. Presumably, skills with similar rankings will have a high ability to crossover.

1. Technology - If you don’t know a mouse from a router, you’re going to have some problems.
2. Social/Marketing - Understanding how people work, and what will trigger the buy.
3. Risk Management - Each type of advertising has it’s own risks associated with it. Knowing and being able to properly assess these is absolutely essential.

So Which Types of Marketing Require Which Traits?

1. E-Mail Marketing
   Whether or not we like to admit it, email marketing is in many ways the granddaddy of internet marketing(in my opinion). It can have almost disgusting profit margins when everything is running properly, but can reduce to large losses just as quickly. So why the grand daddy? It cuts Google out of the equation.
   • Technology: 10/10 - Whitelists, domain keys, spam reports, large IP blocks, honey pots, catch-all accounts, SpamAssassin, internal blacklists, dynamic IPs, external blacklists. If you don’t have an incredible understanding of how the internet operates on these complicated levels, you’re a lost cause as an e-mail marketer. You’re trying to design campaigns to fullfill all of the [often contradictory] requirements that millions of domains have to hit inbox. One SBL listing? You’re done.
   • Social/Marketing: 5/10 - Reaching millions+ people, you don’t need a perfect message. Will it convert better with a perfect message and extraordinary call to action? Yeah. But appearing in the inbox in millions of accounts, you’re going to get some income. Think. If viagra spammers(non-compliant) can get sales using gibberish as a sales pitch, then a less than perfect one is fine.
   • Risk Management: 10/10 - This only gets a 10/10 because I can’t give it an 11/10. There’s dozens of external blacklists, and even more internal. Getting listed on the wrong one can bring your income to a halt. And beyond that, no matter what Wired and everyone else says, e-mailing compliant (or even moreso non-compliant) have massive expenses. Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t forget about upstream/downstream/affiliate network/merchant/credit card processing/mailing server/upstream provider/web hosting server/dns server complaints.
2. SEO
   1. Technology: 7/10 - This can go up or down depending on what shade of gray hat you are. But you need to have a good understanding of the Google algorithm, and their capabilities. This takes research and time. Most people never do end up having a real understanding of it.
   2. Social: 8/10 - Even ignore the entire super-massive “social” aspect of SEO, marketing through SEO has a unique place because often your traffic is looking for information, not a sale. It’s unavoidable, regardless of which terms you target. But a mixture of that and the social/web2.0 internet makes for a high reliance on socialness.
   3. Risk: 5/10 - Is there risk? Yeah. Google can change their minds about a tactic in an instant, or bust paid links. But first, this is lowered by many people working on a consultant basis. Second is the fact that you can enter into longtails with absolutely no risk. No extra cost for that. If you’re paying for links, you can up this number though. Those are a pretty substantial investment.
3. PPC Marketing
   
   1. Technology: 6/10 - Rigorous keyword tracking is the primary reason for this number. Without tracking(as I’m quickly finding out) you’re pretty dead from the start. Beyond that, coding split tests, and a decent understanding with quality score(which is more or less SEO) give this a substantial reliance on technology. But a lot do get by without it.
   2. Social/Marketing: 9/10 - You’re paying per click. A lot. A campaign can go thousands into the red before it profits. Indeed, this is expected in many cases. So if you don’t have finely honed ads(we’re talking GORGEOUS ads) chances are you’re screwed. Because someone else in your niche WILL find a better ad.
   3. Risk: 8/10 - Most niches I’ve found(even mid-level competition) want $1.00-$2.00 per click. Many want more. With that kind of investment, and sometimes under a 10% profit margin(sometimes much more, depends on the campaign), even small things can cause tremendous issues. A new competitor, a scam report ranking, or even bad luck can kill you. Also, let’s take a look at this. For a sale, you’re relying on normally 3 different servers. If your server, the affiliate tracking network server, or the provider server is having problems, you can run a huge expense up in no time at all. Also, with many campaigns to monitor, sometimes things can take a turn for the worst, and you may not notice. But one highly performing campaign can make up for that.

With All That Said…
I find that the most common crossover is SEO->PPC->E-mail Marketing. Which would suggest that despite all of this, risk exists as the primary factor in determining what progression people take. Note that I’m not suggesting any more of these are more or less complex than the others. It’s just the path that people seem to be taking.

Still Pondering,
XMCP

Posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 1:36 pm in the category:CPA, Reflections, affiliate marketing, email marketing, ppc. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment it , or trackback this post.