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These are three things I’m thinking about more, as are many people. Video is such an incredibly potent media. Cinema, and even TV media and advertising, all have huge impacts on how people live. Can you see an internet where video plays a huge roll? It’s not hard to, as the roll of video grows each day. The advent of video sharing is getting everyone in on the act, but is there a place for the small content providers in the world of video?

I think there might be, but it’s going to take a massive effort to professionalize what you do in the field. Some of the most talented people in the world work in the genre of “video production” and all of us are used to an incredibly proficient use of the art. To make weak videos will do as much for you as writing bad copy in a text ad. The media can be the message at times, so if you don’t capture attention quickly, no one will care. It’s not hard to imagine that people have very short attention spans. Can you influence people with 10 second videos? I’m pretty sure you can, and there’s undoubtedly a niche for excellent producers.

Mobile video content is on the rise. In particular, porn videos have made the transition to cell phones and various handlhelds. And more and more mainstream media companies are making the leap. Many of the videos released on Youtube each day are produced by professionals hoping to capture the “buzz” factor.

I have no experience with video editing, but I’m working on it. I figure if I can at least learn to make some decent videos within 6 months it will become yet another way to drive traffic to my websites. I’m not planning on being a professional videographer, but I do think that there’s a great opportunity to drive traffic if you use careful self-promotional videos that also entertain.

Are you interested in video for search engine marketing? Have you used it successfully?

If you’re in the website development game, you reach a point where you decide on working with others, or if you bring in more people for collaborations. I personally have been very reluctant to do any projects with people, and the few that I started with others dried up fast. Most of working online is just plain hard work. If you can find others to work hard, great. But what I worried about happening is spending all of my time managing people, when I could just concentrate on maximizing profit.

If you hire others, your expenses go way up and have to be offset by increased revenue. Even if you enter into a joint venture with others, you need to make more money, or it would be pointless to enter the relationship. But potentifal pitfalls exist, especially because of the unique nature of the internet.

• The partner might steal your ideas – it’s very easy to steal intellectual property
• The relationship might fizzle, and you end up having one more competitor for the top 3 spots of a keyword

Have you done joint projects with others? How did you set up the partnership? Do you think others in a group will pull their weight?

Search engine marketers spend too much time looking for links. Instead, they should let links come looking for their website. What’s the best way to do this? Give people something to link to, and make it easy for them to do so. What types of web pages do people freely link to:

• Websites that give away something useful for free. An example would be a website that gives away a free counter in exchange for a linkback. The same applies for many scripts which run the “Powered by” link on each page. If you have programming and design skills, you can custom craft a script to give away to get links.
• Websites with high quality and deep content. People link to Wikipedia and its’ articles all the time because of indepth info contributed by volunteers.
• Websites that “do something” tend to get a lot of incoming links. If people can use your website, they’re likely to link to you. Think of how well Google has done by offering a simple website where people do something (search)

What other tactics can you think of for “attracting” links as opposed to looking for them? There’s a big difference in the mindsets between attracting them and longing for them. Indeed, if you desire links too much, you might even drive them away. Lot’s of times it’s better to concentrate on improve the unique selling proposition of your website, and let incoming links come to you at their own pace. It all depends on your SEM goals.

Do you get a lot of natural links? Why?

If you’re into search engine marketing, you’re already very familiar with the concept of niches. Niches relate pretty closely to keywords, for the most part, but with some more thought, you can define them even better. If you’re really new to internet marketing, your best bet is going to be to build a website that targets a tight niche. There are several reasons:

1) There’ll be less competition than in a major keyword category, so you can learn the art of internet marketing and actually stand a chance to make some money
2) You can keep focused as you build your website easier, so site construction is a simple task. Since you’re learning, you want to be able to conceptualize your design quite well, so you can develop techniques for acquiring traffic that you know work

What’s an example of a niche?

Web design => idaho web design => idaho flash web design

The four keyword phrase is pretty specific. If you are a web designer, living in Idaho, and specializing in Flash designs, this would be the killer keyword category for you to land. As you become more specific in your marketing and targeting, you’re more likely to experience an increase in conversions. Your traffic might be low, but the people who come to the site are really and truly looking for your product! It’s up to you to close them, but you have a much better chance when you target a specific niche.

Do you target specific niches, or do you attempt to be broad in your appeal?

Yahoo is the first of the major search engines to figure out that Shoemoney has been replaced. MSN and Google are acting stupid, so I might need to force feed them the right answer. You know how Google is: always moving around, ever shifting. The Google winner might just come down to the last day.

The competition has been heating up. It looks like I’m making ShoeMoney famous, which is what he hoped for. He’ll be even more famous when I replace him.

I see more people joining the ShoeMoney competition and these guys are some of the best in the business. Who knows, I might have to bring out the Tommy Guns of Optimizing…a weapon so fierce, I would hate to unleash it on an unsuspecting internet. But I will…if I have to.

The new Shoe revolution is underway. Get on board.