SEO: Waste Of Time Now ?

[razz4900]

You have places such as forums.digitalpoint, getafreelancer and etc. People from Indian are willing to work for cheap. Plus they are willing to lie to make $$$ and idiots are willing to pay. Example: Person A asked me if I'd submit their URL to 150 directories. I said sure for $24.99! They said too expensive and how they are looking for 1500 directories to submit to for a total price of $25.00! Sorry, but there are not that many directories esp. well writen ones and free.

[jbeaul]

SEO when translated to mean "good content attracts quality links and quality links help rankings" is hardly a waste of time. It's what search engine users want used to promote sites in search results.

Artificial link building, e.g. via directories, are intended to circumvent the "good content" element and this makes sites rank high even though they have nothing to offer visitors. That's not what search engine users want. Fortunately, paid links such as directories are now having a far less (if any) impact on a site's search results ranking.

[Rob F]

If you are looking to compete with people who can work for $2/hour - then it's largely a waste of time because you're targeting the wrong market. i.e. people who want to spend $5 for 500 directory submissions & no more.

The way to make money being a SEO is to establish yourself; setup a website and get bankable rankings yourself.

While you're working on improving your own website, offer to do free SEO work for others to use for a case study.

Once you've done that you can start out charging lower prices for SEO work while improving the rankings of your own website (in the SEO keyword industry it'll take a while) and better yourself in terms of the "how to's" of search optimization.

Once you've got undeniable proof in your hands that you know what you're doing and your services, in fact, have statistically proven to increase a websites rankings in worthwhile keyword markets, then you go after people who have money to spend on search optimization - specifically avoiding places like the digital point forums & freelance forums because you can't compete with the prices.

A good place to start is on eBay, while I don't think it's a place where you can land high-dollar optimization contracts, there are plenty of "middle of the road" gigs that you can grab. For instance, there are auctions for sitemap creation that sell for up to $50, you can sell optimization reports for $20+, directory submissions sell from time to time at anywhere from $70-$200 for 500 submissions. Taking advantage of this, especially if you are knowledgeable about effective search marketing, you can turn these one-time gigs into long-term optimization contracts of $30/hour or more. Again, not a high dollar contract, but $30/hour is an ok wage especially for an unestablished SEO.

Offering search optimization services is far from a waste of time, but before you do it you should:

1) be sure you know what you're doing.
2) target the right market.

I think, though, that you should focus on different markets cuz the prices on freelance sites & the like, as you have expierienced, are just too low.

[Buddha's Brother]

don't mind me...I am just sticking around for the answers