Some of the people in the industry that I pegged as pure BS artists are landing clients faster than those with the skills that SHOULD pay the bills.  And it is not by virtue of their ability to rank a site or run an advertising campaign, it’s their ability to BS clients that’s getting them the work.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect your hustle Mr. Snake Oil.  You make more calls, kiss more ass, go to more “networking” events, and hand out more business cards.  You work for yours.  But where are your clients’ sites when you’re done with them?

I’ve been on the frontlines recently.  Pushing out proposals like a madman, researching people’s sites, and checking out the work left behind by previous SEO firms.  What I see, quite frankly, embarasses me.  Mostly because I am getting lumped in with these guys.  Then I get the client’s sob story about their previous experience.  It usually sounds something like this:

“They were great.  We had bi-weekly phone meetings, we used this neat little tool to track our progress, I got reports with graphs in them, and I even rank number one for “Arizona Mortgage Refinancing Specialist Ahwatukee AZ”.  But I just can’t afford the 8k a month retainer anymore“.

Or worse, this:

“They were terrible.  I had a really bad experience with [insert well known company] who promised me rankings.  They charged my 8k a month, and even had the gall to send more invoices when I asked for even the smallest changes“.

My interpretation of both scenarios leads to the same conclusion.

Scenario 1 – You’re a  good bullshitter.  You made your client believe they were getting a value from your shoddy service, overcharged, and dried up the well.

Scenario 2 – You’re a good bullshitter. You made your client believe they were going to get a value for your shoddy service, overcharged, and scared a client from using a better company’s web marketing services down the road.

You’re Doing It Wrong

Either way, I am seeing shoddy work from previous firms and agencies. They’re leaving huge holes in their campaigns.  I’m proposing lower prices than companies were used to paying their old crappy vendors.  I’m seeing low hanging fruit and easy wins for my potential clients.  And I am still having to hustle way more than I ever thought I would have to, just to save a potential client back to the good side of the force.  The fish that normally would be jumping in the boat, are still on the edge.

In cases like these, where clients have been burned, it doesn’t matter that I have rankings and case studies to prove my ability.  It doesn’t matter that I have ringing endorsements from referrals.  It doesn’t matter that I have no problem contracting out clauses or adding performance clauses to mitigate cost risk.  People just have a harder time trusting SEO companies in general, because of the BS artists who left trash in their wake.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em?

Part of me wishes I had a better line of BS. Maybe I should have gone to more events to glad hand realtors, lawyers, and loan sharks.  Or maybe worked on my fake smiles a little more.  Tried to kiss more ass…

But that part of me IS BS.  I’m actually happy with the being a “no bullshit” kind of guy, even if I am not getting as many clients as more polished sales persons with less skill.  It’s just a shame that the pool of potential clients out there has been tarnished by slicksters who are all style, and little substance.

Wish me luck, I am glued to analytics and my heart is pumping.  I hope this works!

It has to.  Failure is not an option.

Unemployment rates in America are steadily increasing.  Over 6.5% of America is unemployed.  Logic dictates that as people lose their jobs, job marketplace websites should see increased interest.  But what I am seeing, is a decline in interest for job marketplace websites.  Seasonality aside (the Holiday season is a down market for most sectors outside of retail) the decline in traffic seen for Career Builder and Monster.com looks pretty dramatic.

Part of this could be because ad budgets are slowing down.  Many of those sites were fueled by advertising revenue from financial products like credit cards, mortgages, insurance, and student loans.  And we all know what happened to American finance.  Finance tanked.  (I know this first hand, because I specialized in marketing financial products for the past 6 years… and the once stable company I worked for is now all-but-out-of-business.)  But even if the advertising engines for the job marketplace sites are slowing, both Monster and CareerBuilder have reached critical mass. Most people already know where to go when searching for jobs online.  And people are not searching for jobs as much.

So what are Americans doing to feed their families?  Searches on affiliate marketing are getting hotter. The amount of people looking to make money online has skyrocketed in the last quarter of this year.  A friend from CJ says their publisher side is booming and the advertiser side is slowing to a crawl.

Money being spent by advertisers online is decreasing.  Online advertising is following the expected path, and is currently off cycle.  But the amount of people looking to get a piece of that pie is increasing fast.  So the moral of the story is, there is less money being spent by advertisers during the recession, and we’re looking at a potential flood of new affiliates who will further dilute the potential profitability for this type of marketing.

So hold on folks.  2009 might be even harder at the bread line as the “new recruits” of recently unemployed affiliate marketers flood the web.

For those more opportunistics types, it might be a good time to launch another affiliate marketplace if you have the money to squat on it for a while.  There will certainly be a lot of CJ rejects looking for a channel.  Growing your publisher base will probably be easier than normal during this time.  But don’t expect the advertisers to bite right away.  If you have the patience to wait through this down cycle in our economy, having a big publisher base ready for the next financial cycle will be key.

So short I couldn’t even finish writing that sentence…

So let’s get to the point then.  Come follow me on Twitter.  Micro-blogging.  Fast.   Click here and win fabulous prizes!

It’s been a crazy year in Student Loan Land, with the big banks and federal government putting the shake down on student lenders (at the expense of students, and much to the chagrin of financial aid officers). Kids are going to have a tough time finding money to pay for school this upcoming semester because of the perfect storm of bad legislation, tough credit markets, and a virtually lifeless capital market. Big banks are looking at this as a boon, a perfect opportunity to swallow up market share. So they are spending MORE despite the fact that the loans are losing them lots of money right now. I’m even watching them trying to work their SEO, and (cough! choke) get social.

Imagine that, fighting off the big banks with deep pockets every day… Feels like Rocky vs. the steroid guy from Russia.

Well fortunately for NextStudent (and all borrowers who find out how great we are!) the Web Marketing Team is holding it down. We’re the big guys around here on the interwebs! We’ve been training like Sly Stallone and we’ll never give up! Get off my Google B of A. Keep up the Chase, Wells F. The web is My Citi!

Ok enough of the bad plays on words. It’s Saturday Night, I should save the bad jokes for my attempt at getting social (aka going to Santisi Bros. with some buddies).

The deal is, the webmarketing team at NextStudent is a powerhouse. We’re more than strong at all of our core competencies, we’re a collective ROCKY. You might be able to get some licks in, but we never give up and we are always on the top. The people I work with are some of the slickest, smartest, and most motivated people I’ve ever met. All aspects of our web marketing repertoire are handled by the best and the brightest. We’re corporate, we’re out there, and we’re helping define the edge that bigger guys can hardly even fathom. Good luck monetary monoliths. BRING IT ON!!!

Rocky – OUT!