It’s been pretty busy around our house lately. We’re getting ready for the holidays, reorganizing and attempting to relax, all at the same time.

We moved in to our new house in August. Life has been upside down for months as we figured out what we wanted to do with the place, sorted out issues with contractors to install some hardwood flooring and finally decided to do it ourselves with help from family.

Throw into the mix my being laid off in September, finally getting my incorrect record of employment this week (still waiting on vacation pay and severance pay) and contract work, and it’s made for a very busy and interesting autumn.

With a couple of solid contracts doing communications work and search engine optimization (SEO) I have been keeping quite busy. I have a nice office to work in at home now, so I can keep organized and be productive. No more working at the coffee table!

I’ve found that keeping a positive attitude through all of this hasn’t always been easy, but it’s certainly made life a lot better when I can. I’d say the majority of the time my attitude is positive. It’s not always easy, and I completely understand how it would be easy to fall into a negative frame of mind.

Alberta: economy still strong here

Despite the economy heading into recession everywhere else, Edmonton and Alberta are still doing well. The dramatically lower oil prices ought to slow the economy a bit, but I think companies will be able to get some projects done a little more easily now. The oil prices will be heading back up; perhaps not as high as before (at least not immediately) but they will go back up, and probably sooner than we’d hope!

We have a lot to be thankful for in Alberta and I’m glad I’m here. It’s been a beneficial move for me and my family. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but it’s all worked out for the best.

I am working with great people and have been working on a lot of really interesting SEO and social media projects of late. I have continued to meet a lot of talented and nice people here in Edmonton and I’m looking forward to meeting more of you! The Tweetups, Meetups and other events I’ve attended have been great. I really enjoy meeting the people I talk to online.

My hope is that I will be able to get out of Edmonton in 2009 to some conferences and meet more of the SEO and social media people I chat with.

I hope that the Christmas season is positive, happy and fun for you and your family and I hope you have a Happy New Year!

Alain Saffel

Does the idea of making money online sound intriguing? How would you like to stay at home surfing and watching TV while you have websites out there making money?

This sounds ideal, doesn’t it? Sound easy? Well, according to some people, it really is.

If only life were so easy. It would seem that all you have to do is put up a blog, drop in some content on a regular basis, put in some Google Adsense ads and boom! You’re a millionaire.

There’s a number of issues that come up here.

• Get rich quick ideas
• How much is content worth?
• Working at home
• Website advertising

I should preface this whole conversation by saying this: I am not opposed to making money online. Is that clear? Hope so. How you make money online is something I am more interested in.

How much is content worth?

I’ll start with this one because it’s near and dear to me. I’m a writer and I value what I write. I hope that my readers do too.

So how much would you expect to pay for a 250-word article? Do you want it professionally written and edited? Do you want it to be well-researched and stand up to scrutiny? How about making sure it’s all original and not plagiarized?

This isn’t something you’re going to pay a penny a word for. Are your site visitors worth more than a penny a word? Copy doesn’t cost $2.50 for a professionally written 250-word article.

If you’re serious about getting some professional writing done, contact me and I’ll tell you how much I charge. Not to worry. You won’t need a second mortgage!

These types of articles are a little different from a blog post that might be strictly opinion and take less effort to write. It surprises me how many companies want to cheap out and pay a penny a word for any kind of writing. The kind of writing you get for a penny a word is not going to be the kind you want to have in front of your customers.

Get rich quick ideas

If only I could just do no work and get rich. Isn’t that a nice dream? There aren’t many who’ve done it.

You’ll run into sites on the net where people think they can do that. They put up sites with content of little or no value, run loads of Google Adsense in the site and hope you’ll click on the ads because they’re more interesting than the content.

Frankly I think this borders on dishonesty. It’s a modern form of bait and switch. My philosophy is to give people solid content. They say content is king and that’s what people are looking for.

So, spend $2.50 on an article, buy a domain name, cheap hosting, put up a blog, sign up for Adsense and you’re in business. Sounds ideal, but the margins are thin and you’re not making much per site.

I’d be interested in trying this just to go through the process. I think it would be a challenge just from the search engine optimization perspective. Put in some decent content and all of a sudden you have a legit website. One person I know said that nobody will click on your ads then. Interesting.

I think this is in the same league as domaining, where you buy a domain name and have one of those fake search pages up. They make money when you click on the ads.

These two techniques are legitimate and legal, but hardly going to make you a millionaire, unless you have a lot of sites out there.

It’s a shame that some great domain names are wasted on these kinds of sites. I view them as the stagnant waters in the ditches that run along the information superhighway.

Working at home

I don’t mind working at home, but I really enjoy having an office to go to. I am one of those sick people. I like the group dynamic and being part of a team. I like going for lunch with coworkers. I like going out for a beer after work. That is the part that sucks about working at home.

Sure, it’s great to work in your pajamas, sipping coffee all day. You can take a shower whenever. Don’t have to shave. You can swear at the TV or chat with the Jehovah’s Witness that just rang the doorbell.

I’ll take the office any day. I like a more professional atmosphere.

Website advertising

I’m not going to knock website advertising, because I think it can be valuable. The problem I have is that so much advertising on websites just doesn’t apply to me. It would be nice if they tried or in any way attempted to target me!

This is possible on Facebook and also in Google pay-per-click ads. Adsense isn’t bad in some ways. It’s topical. More often, Adsense is irrelevant. The ads are often poorly written and targeted so you don’t even bother. We’re conditioned to ignore them.

I experimented a little with Adsense on a blog a while back. The Adsense ads that came up were about blogs! Even when I picked a topic that should have seen the ads change, they didn’t. Admittedly, I wasn’t a pro at the time. Perhaps it’s improved now. I do plan on exploring it again.

Another point of view, especially if you’re selling products or services, is that you shouldn’t have Adsense on your site because it just takes visitors away from you. Good point. They might even go to your competitors. How crazy is that? I know you can filter the ads to an extent to avoid this problem.

Banner ads!

I routinely ignore banner ads as well. If I see another ad for those annoying smileys I might just rip my eyes out. : ) They continue to advertise because people keep clicking on these damn ads! Will you people STOP! Please don’t ever click on them, not even out of curiosity. Don’t encourage them!

I remember once clicking on an ad for K&N air filters. I had no intention of buying it. I already had one for my vehicle. I clicked on it more out of shock that there was an ad for a product I was actually interested in. Do you know how rare that is?

Here’s a tip. If you’re running a website, figure out what your visitors’ demographics are. Not always easy, I know, but try. Then, put up ads that would interest that demographic.

I’ve used this analogy many times before, but think about one of your favourite magazines. Maybe it’s about sewing or maybe about diesel pickups. When you read those magazines, do you look at the ads? I’d be willing to bet that 99 per cent of you do!

But why? Well, if you bought that magazine, you’re interested in the topic. You have likely learned that ads in a magazine like that appeal to your interest and often have good information that is RELEVANT TO YOU.

I came to this realization one day. It seemed so obvious, but it’s not to many people. It’s just a contextual ad. It’s like the guy who advertises in the sports section of the newspaper because he knows his market reads that section. Funny how so many people online don’t get it.

Don’t take the easy way out

I am curious what other people think about these ideas. Do you think you can get rich quick? Or, is it better to take the long-haul approach and build with quality?

Oh, look, I would have made $12.74 (at a penny a word).

Today was the big day and I managed to make it through my SEO presentation at the University of Alberta in Edmonton without having a heart attack or putting anyone to sleep.

We got good feedback, which is nice to hear. I was pretty worried about it. I haven’t done any major public speaking, well, ever! I’ve spoken in front of smaller groups before, but not as big as the one today. I think there were around 55 people total.

I realized some flaws in how I presented that I’ll work on for my next one. I think the information I provided was good, but I ran over my time a bit. Agh! I think I had too many notes on my speaking page, which made it a bit choppy as I had to read a bit while presenting. Nothing like shaking that rust off!

I recorded the whole presentation which included Melanie Nathan from Status Firm and James Klassen from Epiar. I thought Melanie and James did a really good job on their part of the presentation and I learned a few new things along the way. I put a few tweets up on Twitter too.

Our presentation was about search engine optimization (SEO) basics, website content optimization and keyword research. We only had 1.5 hours, so it was a quick overview for the University of Alberta librarians and some government employees.

I enjoyed doing my presentation and I’m looking forward to being able to do more of them. I did record it and I will convert it to MP3 and put it up on here. I’m hoping the recording quality will be good, but I know it won’t be perfect.

I’ll also be putting my presentation up here after filling out my slides a little more. : )

Comments:

1. John Sinclair Says: November 10th, 2008 at 9:17 pm

The presentations on SEO were all well-received and the feedback quite positive. Thanks for your contribution, Alain, and congrats from the organizers!

2. Alain Saffel Says: November 18th, 2008 at 11:50 am

I really enjoyed the presentation. I was a little apprehensive, as it was my first presentation in a while. Looking forward to doing more.