A couple of interesting stories on SEO in Sitepro News today.  Firstly from http://www.seobook.com/google-branding on how Google is now favoring big brands.  I had noticed this myself over the last month or so and the trend is now firmly set.  Big corporates will start to dominate search in the same way they dominate traditional markets – perhaps more so.

This sucks if you’re a one man band search marketer and it will become increasingly difficult to generate profits without PPC which I still find something of a lottery.  Sadly, it is understandable.  The amount of crap you come across now is quite extraordinary especially from atricle spinners.  The information is often out of date and incorrect  Those of us that practice article marketing will realise that for the majority it is only utilised as a mechanism to build backlinks for ranking purposes.

I make a good living online but it is really thanks to Yahoo as (despite what I read) ranking in Google becomes increasingly difficult.  Is the end nigh?  Well one can only really hope for greater search competition.  The day Google only has a 30% market share or less will be a great one.  It is a virtual monopoly and, in my view, it should be broken so consumers have more choice.

Matt Cutts might say write great content but even that looks more and more likely to be ignored as they begin to favor of big brands over smaller businesses.

The other story of note is that Yahoo is updating it’s search.  This is always a nervy time for me as I rely on them for my profits.  In November I recieved a huge boost which doubled my traffic (and therefore my earnings) overnight.  I hope to benefit similarly this time but am all to aware that things could just as easily go in to reverse.

For now we can only carry on doing what we’re doing as it is exceptionally difficult to anticipate future trends, but, there is no doubt that 2009 could be the most challenging for search marketers to date.  As several noted last year (Shoemoney in particular) search as we know it could be dead.

What are your thoughts?

As I mentioned at the end of December I am not proposing to post specific numbers any longer.  I started this site as a permanent record as much for myself as the many others who now read the blog whenever I make a post.    It was to document my internet marketing journey from hopeless newb to super success lol.   I thought it would take a couple of years to generate an income sufficient for my needs (actually I’m not even sure I thought it was possible) but, in the last two months, I have generated more than I ever made as a senior manager in full time employment (and that is after expenses).

So I have become living proof that anyone can make the transition from interent dummy to success in a pretty short space of time.  It took me 12 months from the day I started researching to get to where I am today.  I settled on BANS as the most likely way I could make money at the end of March2008  generating £7,000 from my endeavours in December.  Didn’t do quite so well in January but I doubt many did.  It was still pretty good though (acutally it was very good).

I’ve launched a coaching program which aint cheap at £999 for 6 1 hour sessions  (I am a qualified coach by the way) to cut through the crap and accelerate the speed that those struggling to make it can succeed.  The program is full  so if you’d be interested in using the service let me know and I’ll add you to the waiting list.   The next slot will probably be available towards the end of the month but maybe the middle of March.

I remain concerned that I only have the niche store model generating most of my income and I have explored some other money making models but I haven’t found much I can get excited about yet.   If you know of any worth looking at let me know.

This year I have been trying to optimize my working week so I can focus on what makes the biggest difference.  I had built a number of new stores but I have decided to freeze development for a month or so whilst I revamp my existing stock.  I have a large number of poorly performing stores and should be able to dramatically increase earnings by focusing on some off page seo stuff which I am allocating 2-3 days per week to.   Yeah I know I outlined a different routine in my last post but they say internet marketing moves fast right?  Obviously I provide an update on how things progress in this regard.

That said, I have been making extensive use of the need-an-article.net service which I can highly recommend.  Unique articles cost just $5.52 each and are just wonderful for submitting to article directories.  It takes me about an hour to write one of these so if I charged for my time the cost of me producing one would be about $45.  To paraphrase Brian Tracy, if you want to earn $45 per hour don’t waste your time performing $5.52 per hour tasks!

Having had an article produced you need to submit it to as many article directories as possible.  Again, this is a truly thankless task which needs to be automated.  I currently use Article Marketer and after a sticky start with them I now distribute all of my stuff via them and am happy to recommend them to anyone.  Try them out using the free account option but the paid service gives much wider distribution.