Make a fortune with Twitter!!

Grow your followers by gajillions a day!!!

ZOMG! Secret Ninja Twitter System Runs On Autopilot!!!!!!

Well I have to say, I have done my research … and these “systems” are junk.

Do they work to increase your follower count? Yes. I have checked some Twitter accounts who use these systems and they do have big Twitter follower numbers.

Can you make money with Twitter? Yes. I do and I know others who do.

Can you make money using these Twitter systems? I very much doubt it!

Confused? Don’t be, I will explain.

These systems exploit and promote a certain behavior that is present in Twitter use. That of “follow me and I will follow you”.

If someone follows you, you follow them right back, all automated.

OK so far? Sure, there are legitimate rationalizations for doing this. I tried it once and didn’t like it, too much direct message spam for my liking, but others I know like this approach so fair play.

This alone can increase your follower numbers because people will follow you to get a follow back. You might even get onto a list of “people who will follow you back just for following them”.

See where this is going?

So the next step in “Teh Todally Awsum Ninja Style Follow Count Boosting Strategy” is to go and follow a whole bunch of folks who are guaranteed to follow you right back. Turn the tables and get some of that reciprocal follow lovin’ for yourself.

Can you see the problem with this?

“I have zero interest in you or anything you have to say, but by following you I get an additional follow on my follower list which in some way will pay off down the line and make me look more popular than I really am - win!”

There is a third step, another “Ninja Move” … ready?

Unfollow anyone who doesn’t follow you back.

Why waste following folks who do not follow me, the theory goes, that is a “wasted follow”.

Erm … is that what Twitter has become? A search for an inflated follower count?

So, ok, you now have a gajillion+ followers, where does the money come in?

In this system? It doesn’t.

At no point have we grown a follower base of people who know, like and trust you. None of these folks care about what you have to say, and certainly will not take your recommendations or buy what you have to sell.

Why would they? They are not even human many of them!

It is automated bots following automated bots.

The correct approach is to engage real human beings and interact. Show some value, have conversations, and most of all … avoid the short cuts.

What do you think? Have I got it all wrong? Are you about to buy your next beach front property with all your Twitter millions? Please share in the comments …

Content really is a large part of our success in social media, but it is not the only thing. We have to be clever about the content we create, how we create it, where we put it and most of all, how we promote it.

A common strategy in traditional marketing is to create a white paper. Usually this would be a report that would position a business in a favorable way while explaining a solution. So there would be “10 ways to choose a designer”, with all ten points showing how the company that sponsored the white paper is the ideal choice.

In the social media world this became an ebook or special report, and while the phrase “white paper” is less often used, they are pretty much the same thing. The difference tends to be in packaging and delivery.

In social media the appearance of the report will be more vibrant, more consumer-friendly. While the traditional white paper might be locked behind an opt-in form, the social media report would be free to download instantly, but with call to action to share the report widely through email and social tools.

This sharing causes a viral effect of visibility, and is a key way to get your message out to a wider audience.

Lately though people have taken it even further and taken the content out of the PDF and into the web site. Readers have a choice of reading directly online or downloading. This encourages immediate reading and skimming, and also allows people to link to key parts of the material.

If you have old ebooks and reports lying around, I suggest you consider repurposing the content this way.

What if you do not have the original document any longer? If your PDF is locked tight, you can extract the content with some online tools - there is even a PDF to Excel converter for extracting tabular data. You can use scribd.com to upload and share your PDF, and embed it in web pages using the handy online viewer.

Once you have your content up on the web and it is being shared, consider a Creative Commons license to encourage sharing within other webmasters sites. This will generate even more links and visibility, and people are going to scrape your content anyway so you might as well benefit from it!

Kieron

Q: You are a well known face in the affiliate scene. For those who do not know you though, please share some information about who you are and what you do?

I’ve been an affiliate now for around ten years. I first started as a PPC affiliate before Google Adwords even launched in the UK - I had to have a US account, still do. Since then I’ve diversified into building sites that gain traffic via organic methods. My main focus now is building affiliate sites that rank well on their own and aren’t reliant on PPC.

Q: What does being a super affiliate bring you? For anyone looking to make the leap, is the grass really greener on your side of the fence?

I think that being successful in any role has it’s advantages. Certain doors or opened and opportunities are presented just because I’ve been “around the block” and am reasonably well known in the space. Other than that, it’s no different really.

Q: How did you get started in the affiliate world?

I worked for a dot com startup in the late nineties and they were just awful. They eventually packed in their operation and made everybody redundant. So I thought I would take advantage of the time I had to myself and bought a book on how to build websites in MS Frontpage. I built my first site then started exploring ways to monetise it, which led me to affiliate marketing.

Q: Do you think it is still possible for an affiliate to start now and manage to pay their bills within a year?

Yes absolutely. In some ways now it’s easier than ever because we have WordPress which makes it so easy for anybody starting out to get a professional looking website live and for free with little or no technical
experience. Gone are the days where you had to learn how to use MS FrontPage :) The great thing is that the internet is still a rapidly expanding sector, what other sectors can say that in these turbulent financial times? That means lots of new opportunities, niches and sectors for affiliates to explore and monetise.

Q: If you were to start over from scratch, what would you do differently and how would you suggest someone start today? 

With regards to doing something differently I certainly wouldn’t be reliant on PPC for as long as I was. PPC is great for instant targeted traffic but if you don’t know what you’re doing you can get burnt very easily. So I would have maybe launched my stand-alone sites earlier than I did so I had two revenue streams. For somebody starting today my advice has always been to build a site that you have a passion and knowledge about. This will mean that you can write good content (half the battle) and also it won’t appear like a chore or a job. Don’t chase the money either, don’t start a site in a niche just because you think it’s profitable.

Kieron (in loud red shirt) with Doug Scott

Q: What would you say were the stand out memories of your affiliate career?

Probably all the great people I met along the way, From the early A4U meetups which were 10 people in a pub to the A4U Expo event which I speak at and which is attended by thousands of people. I guess also, the point when affiliate marketing started to make me enough money that it allowed me to walk away from my 9 - 5 job, that was a good day!

Q: Have you made any mistakes along the way?

Loads, where shall I start? Anything from losing silly amounts of money on PPC because I was too bloody-minded to admit defeat to launching sites in unprofitable and tiny niches that just faded away.

Q: You do not just do affiliate stuff that you are known for, what other business ventures do you have going on?

At the moment ContentNow.co.uk has really taken off and it taking up a lot of my time. I started this venture with my business partner Simon as I saw the need for a good quality ethical link building and content writing
company. In my opinion those are the two most important off-page factors for SEO. We’re very lucky that we’ve grown very quickly and are working with a fantastic client base. My other big project is ShareMyPlaylists.com which is a social music site based around sharing Spotify playlists. This has really
blown up this year and we’ve went from a standing start in March to a point now where we’re generating 10,000 visitors a day and growing - all organically through SEO and Social Media.

Q: How did you get involved with Spotify and how on earth is that going to pay off for you?

My good friend Shak is close to the founder Daniel Ek, and he introduced me to the service when it was in invite-only beta stage last year. As a keen music lover I was instantly addicted to it and something in me just clicked. I just knew that Spotify would grow to be a hugely popular global phenomenon and there would be an opportunity to capitalise on it’s success and build a community around it. As although Spotify is great at what it does, it doesn’t allow for much interaction (intentionally) from users and the sharing of playlists. That was when I had the idea to build the best Spotify playlist sharing site and music community I could, and ShareMyPlaylists.com was born. At the moment I’m concentrating on building a user base and making
the functionality as easy to use and intuitive as I can. My aim is by building a community of music lovers this will become an attractive proposition for advertisers wishing to connect with this very specific
demographic.

Q: What is your obsession with white cars all about?

Kieron has a strange fetish for white cars ... we all need a hobby

I’ve had black cars for years and just wanted something different. A couple of years ago I started to notice a few cars launched in white and just fell in love with them. I bought my Range Rover in white and have never looked back!

Thanks Kieron! You can find out more and read his thoughts on all things internet marketing at his blog.

Perhaps, in the future, we will all wear cameras on our heads, emblazoned with our social network of choice. We will be like clans, and people will be able to watch us walk about on their computers, and the cameras will have built-in speakers which anyone can access from their laptops. Obscenities will be shouted from your head without you opening your mouth, most likely at your mother, at which point an Australian will respond through your mother’s speaker with a torrent of antipodean abuse. Your Vietnamese head-friend will reply with some diplomatically dubious language, triggering yet another inter-clan remote-diss deathmatch.

Fancy having a camera strapped to your head?

Social networks are only just getting started. At the moment they are a luxury addition to our lives. We can all dabble in Facebook, Twitter and/or any other myriad free sites, exchanging pointless notes and anecdotes. They are the ultimate procrastination aids. Hours can be whiled away staring at the profile of that bloke you met down the pub only once but who somehow managed to track you down (hint: you said ‘or my name’s not ___ ___’ during a drunken argument). The novelty of statuses and tweets is at its apogee - we can all tell everyone else what we’re doing while we’re doing it, and they can tell us what they think about it. It’s communication on an unprecendented level of immediacy. For those who thought the mobile phone was an annoyance, Twitter would probably trigger a mild stroke. Worse still for these folks, this trend shows no sign of abating. But where next?

Instant updates. Instantly. It will take it's toll on some people. This girl's 28!

Web 2.0 recently became the 1,000,000th word in the English language. The 1,000,001th word was a portmanteau variation on ‘bollock-face’, used to describe the person who decided Web 2.0 was a word. Most of us living outside silicon valley take these terms to mean new computer stuff that we’ll most likely have to deal with at some point but only once they’ve been renamed as something more friendly, like a bird, like a little birdie, like Twitter. The initiated understand Web 2.0 to be the second generation of internet usage, where user-generated content (blogging, YouTube) is facilitated by user-led communication (Facebook, Twitter) as opposed to Web 1.0, which can be understood as the standard publish/read interaction of the proverbial web page.

Plugged in

The Web 2.0 idea is immensely powerful. It originally allowed us to exercise our egos in a communal setting. One of the main criticisms levelled at social networks was their function as highly visible popularity contests. While this may have been the case to begin with, the only people who had a problem with this aspect of Web 2.0 were those who cared about those things already. Now, with my mum and dad firmly entrenched in Facebook, the fact that they choose to talk only to people they already talk to illustrates the ability of social networks to reinforce existing corporeal relationships as well as providing a comprehensive portal on which to build new connections. This movement from ego-based networking to genuine relationship reinforcement is a fundamental shift. A Facebook update or a Tweet can now take the place of a text message or a quick phone call. People who you may have had few opportunities to meet due to geographical proximity can now become close friends, just by checking your news feed. The key to the development of this burgeoning facet of social networking will be the mobile phone.

The mobile phone holds the key to it all

At the moment only Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android OS provide truly compelling social networking on mobile handsets, yet this is already triggering a massive upsurge and reification of Web 2.0 into our daily lives. Since the introduction of YouTube video sharing on the iPhone 3GS, mobile video uploading has increased by 400% in six days. A decade ago, the dream was for the mobile phone to become a viable Web 1.0 publishing platform. Now, already, the mobile has moved into Web 2.0 territory, where you can publish your YouTube video literally seconds after having filmed it and then, seconds later, receive a comment about the video from a friend or stranger.

This picture will be on YouTube in 1.8secs. Too Slow!

This is not simply an ephemeral development either. President Obama has recognised the development of these technologies by accepting a question from a blogger during a press conference. The recent riots in Iran have been shared with the world via Twitter when traditional methods of reporting had been shut down by the government. Democratisation of the distribution of content, and subsequent response and interaction with that content, is the ultimate achievement of social networking thus far.

So where next? Before social networking can develop further, the question of monetisation rears its ugly head. The demand for the services social networking provides is beyond question, and it could well become the foundation for much of web development in the future if - and it’s a big if - the companies that run and maintain these networks can turn a profit. Facebook continues to run on fumes, with its actual valuation unknown and its attempt to accumulate consistent revenues from Google’s famed ad-click model not working out. Twitter faces much the same battle. At the moment, despite some novel efforts, everyone knows that everyone wants social networking without knowing quite how to make a mint out of it. It’s a business model that many will be uncomfortable with.

But how do you make money out of it all? There's gotta be a way!

It is also important to remember that these businesses are start-ups developed by upstarts, success stories that have come about through equal parts effort and luck. Until the monetary value of these networks can be measured (people are investing through speculation-heavy optimism) then their ability to reinvigorate themselves will be hindered.

It's going to be an even bigger part of our lives...

Assuming that these obstacles can be overcome, and allowing the head cameras to creep back in, social networks could become an integral part of our lives in the same way mobile phones have. Through the improvement of the mobile networking experience, having constant connections to our friends, our family and even to strangers will change how we perceive the exchange of information. Waiting five minutes for a response to a Tweet will seem like forever, just as waiting an hour for an e-mail does now, just like waiting two days for a letter must have seemed a couple of generations ago. The pace will pick up, and the 1990s idea of us having a ‘virtual self’ and a ‘real self’ will be usurped by a fully integrated real and online existence. We will Tweet to our group of friends on the way to the pub, and we’ll keep doing it until we get off the bus and outside the pub, because waiting five seconds to tell your mate what you thought about the latest summer blockbuster will seem like too long. Failing that, I vote for the head cameras.

(It goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that first we would of course recommend this very blog and my own new media marketing blog as a close second.)

By no means will this list be complete, so please let us know your suggestions in the comments.

General Marketing

• The almighty Godin is an obvious place to start. Love him or hate him, he gets people thinking and talking.
• Duct Tape Marketing wins points just for the cool name.
• Marketing Profs and Grok are well worth keeping up with.

SEO & SEM

• SEOBook - Aaron has a huge brain, provides thoughts and ideas that never occur to anyone else until he writes about them, and offers a free beginners SEO course via email. Check out our Interview with Aaron Wall on this very blog.
• Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Land and SEOMoz cover all the SEO news. SEOMoz is likely my favorite just because of their rockin’ Whiteboard Friday videos.
• Not all SEO blogs are purely facts and tips - SEO “personalities” with great blogs are Graywolf, Sugarrae, JasonD (interview here), Lyndon and obviously Google’s own Matt Cutts.
• If PPC (in the advertising sense) is your thing, then the best is Perry Marshall.

Copywriting

• I have to give a special mention to Copyblogger, otherwise Brian will slap me upside the head. Seriously though, no blog list would be complete without Copyblogger, even despite my articles on there.
• A key concept in online copywriting is crafting compelling headlines, check out this ebook by Sean D’Souza.
• Other great copywriters with blogs are Bob Bly, Clayton Makepeace and Mike Stelzner the White Paper dude.

Blogging and Social Media

• Problogger is the first port of call for any aspiring blogger.
• Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and Blog Herald keep you up with the blogging and social media news.
• Build a business blog with Typepad expert Denise Wakeman
• Chris Brogan is the Phileas Fogg of social media and Mari Smith is the Queen of FaceBook

Have I Missed Your Favorites?

Share your favorites in the comments …

While frustrating, this backfired just enough for him that I never said or did anything to stop it. He was causing his own mess so retaliation on my part was not necessary.

You see, he did not know the secret of WHAT and WHY …

Many marketers are like this, they are looking at other companies and trying to steal their ideas. They watch competitors and then try to copy their tactics, then wonder why it ends with less than stellar results.

It is not enough to know what someone is doing that is making them successful. That is even supposing you have the entire picture, which I highly doubt.

You need to know WHY they are doing things in a certain way.

Modeling behaviour in order to be more successful takes greater effort than just parroting surface tactics.

You will not be surprised that search is the same. Rather than look at the top results and try to match what they have done, look deeper into why they are ranking the way they do, and look at why you are ranking below them.

Anyone can copy. Real marketers steal then innovate

Hey! Check out my new post! It rocks!

Something was wrong. I looked, I looked and looked again. I thought Digg was loading up wrong (it takes ages to load round here) but the Shout functionality has gone. Poof. Just like that. If you wish to share a post, you’re encouraged, via the toolbar! to Tweet it or post it to your Facebook page, then share it that way.

More power, more friends, doesn't matter

Now Digg have been trying to get a higher public profile for a while now. First off, they introduced the Digg bar (I think enough has been said about that so far) and now they’ve removed internal communication to give themselves a nice talking point, especially in Twitter. Search #Digguser and you’ll see what I mean.

Another aim of the removal of the shout is to stop power accounts being able to dominate the front page. Basically they will stop people who have 1,000 and 1,000 of friends get an instant amount of diggs straight away and catapult their story ahead of possibly more relevant pieces. But these power accounts are there for a reason, and all of these big hitters were perfectly prepared for this removal of shouting and have embedded their IM and FB profiles into their shouts for weeks. If you look on the front page today, it’s not much different.

Also, I imagine another key reason for Digg removing this is to cut down on Spam and mindless digging. If you have many, many friends and are active on Digg, you do spend a lot of time digging shouts that are sent to you, even if you don’t like the article or read it. It’s sort of a quid pro quo that allows you to get the Diggs you need. Of course, Digg’s algorithm spots that sort of behaviour in an instant, but if you’re anything like me, English and polite, you feel compelled to keep your ‘friends’ happy.

I like to imagine my Digg friends like Joey, Chandler and Monica, makes me feel happy

But for the normal user - what use are your friends now? What is the next step to communicating to your Diggerati? Well, you could spend a lot of your time (now the shout functionality has gone) getting all of their Facebook/IM/Twitter details or you could just forget Digg, and concentrate on other sites where either their communication terms are different and respected (Reddit) or are well established, like Twitter, Stumbleupon and Facebook.

Facebook is the future? Their owners hope so! :)

And talking of Stumbleupon, they have completely gone the other way this year. Before you couldn’t send your stories to all your friends, but now you can.

So, who’s right? Which is going to be the tool that is going to win out in the end? Will it be Twitter and Facebook, who appear to be aiming to be the conduits for all sites or will it be sites like Mixx and StumbleUpon who let you share primarily through their own sites and wants to keep all this cool stuff, even though it’s Spammy, in their pages?

No one likes Spam, the meat or the other kind...

Digg thinks they know, and so do Stumbleupon – but what do you think?

Jason as the filling in a Spam Sandwich &tm;

Jason was one of the most insightful and plain comedic members of the sadly missed Threadwatch community. I was thrilled at the chance to catch up with him.

You have been around the SEO game a while, how have things changed?

Rumors that Jason taught SEO to the ancient Sumarians are sadly not true

The industry has changed form early innovation to one of maturity. No longer are the quick wins, that once filled an industry in it’s infancy, still the routes to success within the search engines that they used to be.

Effective long term planning, analysis of campaigns and operations balanced with healthy goal setting are thankfully now the norm. Unfortunately there are still some “cowboy” operators but they are fewer in number and snake oil is sold a lot less now than it used to be.

- How did you get into SEO?

I can’t remember a defining moment when I became an SEO but I do remember Yahoo launching and thinking “WOW” when I saw business coming via a submission there. I don’t believe I ever looked back!

- Did you learn from any experts or did you figure it out for yourself?

I learn from everyone within and outside the industry. I don’t believe there are any “experts” within the SEO industry but I do believe that some have more experience than others. Those with experience intuitively understand when they have found a new insight into the algorithms that they previously didn’t have but the journeys to those insights (at least for me) can be found in th weirdest and most wonderful of ways.

A small conversation with anyone can deliver a spark that leads to something amazing. The most important thing I have learned is that everyone has the potential for delivering a spark!

- Which events, actions or successes do you think lead to your gaining your place amongst the SEO crowd?

3 core things stand out for me.

• Ranking for most of the financial related phrases within the UK
• Writing a piece at Web Master World in what become known as the Florida update
• Taking a site from nowhere to #1 in the world for a one word gambling phrase.

Gambling has long been a viciously competitive niche and Jason beat the odds

- You have always been one of the more analytical SEOs, do you think there is still a place for watching algos, ranking shifts and so on?

Most definitely but only secondary to actually doing work to raise your rankings, conversions etc. You can analyse all day long but work with what you have before trying to find the magic bullet to take you one stage further. Doing is a hell of a lot more cost effective and delivers a greater ROI than analysing what to do!

Jason has always been one of the more analytical SEOs

- What would you have been doing if you hadn’t been an SEO?

I’d have probably stayed practicing law!

- When did you realize that there was money in this here internet thing?

About the mid 90s. 1995 - 1996 roughly when I remember receiving calls and people sending cheques from abroad relating to a service I was offering. It was a true light bulb moment!

- Can you think of any huge mistakes you have made?

I have made more mistakes than most people have had hot dinners. The biggest ones have cost me everything but combined they have helped mold the person that I am today.

If I were to summarize what I have learned from my mistakes, because they are one hell of a way to learn, they are:

1. Don’t think about what to do, just do it!
2. Refer to number 1
3. Known when you have lost the battle and stop fighting!

- If you had to start over from scratch and still pay the mortgage, what would you do?

If the kids were getting hungry I’d clean the streets with my toothbrush to feed them but hopefully I’d come up with a better plan before that happened.

I would look to Ebay, retail sales, and upcoming trends and sell sell sell

Thanks Jason! Everyone should check out Jason’s blog right now

Apart from the obvious snake-oil aroma emanating from the sales pitch, the idea that you have to throw out your old, working approaches just because you have discovered new tactics is mind blowingly dumb!

Social Media and SEO go together like bacon and eggs.

And let’s not forget our old direct marketing pals. Perhaps email and PPC are the pancakes and syrup?

In any campaign or promotion we need to use the best approaches available to us, and use them in a coordinated way so that they reinforce and support each other.

Deciding your tactics need not be like shopping for fast food, think of it more like selecting from the all you can eat internet marketing breakfast buffet!

Chris Garrett caught up with him for our blog.

- You worked on submarines before becoming the SEO guru that we know and love, so how did you get into SEO? Did you try adwords or organic first?

Aaron traded this lifestyle for SEO guruing!

Well I didn’t do much PPC stuff before I got into SEO stuff. I actually was interested in trying to figure out how search engines worked because I wanted to rank a whinge website. And I wasn’t driven by wanting to make lots of money until the sleazy company named Traffic Power sued me. I felt so long as I was at least breaking even and learning then I would end up ahead eventually. But when they almost deep 6ed me with a bogus lawsuit. I decided it made sense to build up a war chest in case anyone else ever tried something like that again. By trying to screw me over they made me stronger, and their CEO is in jail. It is quite gratifying, really.

- What specific events inspired you to become a recognized expert in SEO?

You always need a good mentor

I think a passion for learning + good mentors + good market entry timing all played a big role for me. The Florida Update in 2003 (the year I started) was a big opportunity for publicity, and then being one of the first half-dozen or so SEO bloggers also made growth much easier. All the tools we give away also help get our brand well known and out there.  I also think that my lacking of self esteem (particularly when I was new) made me want to seek validation, which sorta is what popularity does. But the truth is it is better to have a dozen great friends than thousands of fake friends. I don’t think I appreciated that enough until I met my wife.

- Who are the role models/mentors you learned most from?

Role Models! Get 'em while they're hot

• My mom taught me to work hard
• My wife taught me more than I can write here
• An old school SEO named NFFC who was my mentor about SEO stuff
• Tim Berners-Lee gave us the www
• Seth Godin has a sharp mind for marketing
• Danny Sullivan helps put search in context
• David Naylor & Greg Boser also helped a lot, particularly at conferences.

- What are the biggest mistakes you have made?

Learn from your mistakes; even at a betting lot

Not valuing my time enough. It is cool to do nice things to people for free. But eventually if you get popular you create an imbalance of attention, at which point you need to decide how much your time is worth to you. Most the people who want to be spoonfed personalized help for free are too lazy to succeed, even if you give them all the information they need. They won’t apply it because they think you are holding something back. Plus I have found that generally people do not respect your opinion and listen to you as much as they should unless they pay for the privileged.

- What are your most memorable success stories?

Really? Success in helping others?

Well I tend to think my wife finding me and buying my ebook has to be #1. But then that probably sounds weird as a success story (unless, of course, I was selling some cheesy attraction strategy dating ebook to alpha male douche bags).

I have helped make many people multi-millionaires…and I usually think of success in those terms rather than boasting about myself directly. Plus I tend to be more interested in learning than money (though I think governments stealing our money and giving it to bankers who committed trillions of dollars worth of fraud is absolutely appalling).

- What do novice SEOs miss when it comes to Authority?

Build it up whilst you're young

A lot of people look at the web and just think of it as a bunch of sites and links. But if you think about it as a social network, and think about the people running those sites, it is far easier to build links and authority.

Links and rankings are not driven by fairness. They are driven by relationships, marketing, and profits.

- How can Joe Noob increase their Authority?

Respect ma au-thoritaaa!

Interact with others that are authoritative. This can be as simple as leaving an insightful comment on their blog, writing something about them, or asking them if they would be up for an interview.

Another big thing is to go to the extremes with pricing. Have a high price-point so people know you value your time, but also provide a lot of great content/tools/software/value for free to help build awareness.

- Do you have a go-to technique for getting more links?

Not these sort of links

Directories are an easy starting point. Beyond that I think being socially active, creating great content, marketing offline at industry events, and just developing lots of paths/trails that lead to you allows you to slowly build an audience and authority (and links).

- What do you advise for anyone hoping to get links from the strongest authorities?

A link from the BBC........please?

Try to appeal to their interests, or blatantly disagree with them using logic and facts. A surprisingly large number of people will be nice to you if you are first nice to them. If you can get them to feel the need to reciprocate something nice then they are going to be far more likely to want to help you, and they will be much more willing to accept a guest article by you, be up for doing an interview, and/or link to you.

- How do you feel about the DiggBar debate?

More controversial to web fanboys than Greedo shooting first

You can’t be a market maker without being a market manipulator. Networks are always trying to expand any way they can. Most the people I know who used to work on Digg stuff have eventually quit because the ROI has diminished over the years.

- Do you think being an SEO rockstar made you a better romantic catch?

Rockstar Fanboys are rocking

No. If anything being an SEO makes me less of a catch for a couple reasons
1.) I work too much
2.) I have got pretty chubby

- Did you really eat an entire submarine’s stock of bacon?

Mmmmmmmm ... *bacon*

The cooks were generally lazy pieces of trash. So long as 1 food item was still available they wouldn’t cook any more. So they had 2 day old bacon out on the line. So I decided I we should eat all the bacon until those pieces of trash did their jobs. But I couldn’t have ate all of it by myself,  I split it with a friend named John Martin. He ate a bit more than I did.

Thanks Aaron!

Check out SEOBook - now!