I laughed [out loud] when I read this quote in an article by Valley Wag’s Paul Boutin.

“Entrepreneurs You guys think money is everything. That is, you think money is some sort of universal currency into which anything can be converted, and which can be converted to anything else.”

I’ve been expressing my frustration about entrepreneurship lately. I don’t hate us though. Sometimes I just get entrepreneur overload. When I live entrepreneur can be a bad word and synonymous with starvation. I think it’s because it’s a young population, educated, and often willing to take risks. It’s also got more Inc 500 companies per capita than anywhere in the country.

Yesterday my business partner and I had lunch with Courtney Tuttle, a blogger and Internet marketer (www.courtneytuttle.com).Up until a few days ago I didn’t know he lived close so I contacted him and the next day we met him. Courtney is just as generous in real life as he is in his blog. He openly teaches what he’s learned as an internet marketer. He’s built a successful small business with several virtual employees.

I asked Court for a quick interview about our discussion. Sometimes I’m writing more than actually interacting, so I followed up after to get things in his own words. Keep reading to see what other topics we covered and for some excellent advice.

Please enjoy:

Q: What is the best way to make friends with other bloggers?

The best way I’ve found to make friends with bloggers Janet is by writing about them. This comes very easily to people that are unselfish and can be a huge asset. I’ve written quite a few posts that are about bloggers that I look up to and some of those posts have turned into very cool and rewarding friendships.

For an example on his blog see Top 7 Internet Marketers you Can Trust – which features Wendy Piersall and other well respected bloggers. This post is how he got to know most of them!

Q: What is the most rewarding part of blogging – to you?

Educating people on topics that they don’t understand. There is so much bad information out there it’s almost scary. I have always been honest with people about what internet marketing is and people appreciate that.

Q: What’s your favorite (most utilized) internet marketing tool?

Honestly, I’m not a big user of many tools. I do use Wordze [to find the most searched keywords] for most of my keyword research.

But I make the final decision on what keywords I want to target based on my own evaluation of the sites that rank well in Google for the keywords I’m researching. I guess I should say that my favorite ‘tool’ is testing. I have enough sites to test literally thousands of ideas and that is how I learned most of what I know.

Janet inserts – I haven’t tried Wordze.com but they really should optimize for the word Wordz – because they were nowhere on that search. Also, Court told me they have will show you what sites rank highest for the keywords you want to target and show backlinks. It also shows the rate at which they add new links. He also mentioned for less trafficked web sites, he uses StatCounter to get stats.

Q: What’s the best idea you’ve had for your business?

Getting help! Honestly I don’t know how I used to do everything on my own. I know have a group of people that help me with my day to day tasks, and that has really improved my quality of life. Increased time has helped me to think more clearly about what my business needs.

Q: How do you determine which keyword phrases to concentrate on?

Well there are a lot of different strategies that I use to select keyword phrases. For a niche blog, I choose keywords that have very little competition so that I can rank in Google very quickly. For a flagship blog, I choose the biggest and usually hardest keyword phrase in the industry because it will give me the most traffic once I get ranked in the top few sites.

Q: What’s your favorite linkbuilding strategy?

I actually don’t have a favorite because you have to have huge diversity to have success in your link building campaign. I would have to say that my most powerful link building strategy for CourtneyTuttle.com is the brand that I have created.

If you are really helping people to learn a business, they will show their gratitude and excitement by linking to you. If you aren’t giving them knowledge and skill that they can use, they probably won’t. They will start to believe in you and your brand if you can give them information that works and this will lead to praise and links. I would say that a pretty high percentage of my links are of this type.

Q: Has Internet marketing changed your life?

Well to be honest I have always approached internet marketing as pure business. I’m able to separate my life from that and other than having a nicer car than I used to, I don’t really think it has impacted my life at all. To me, business is business and life is life. I like to reserve my life time for friends and family and I try not to let my business get in the way of that.

Q: What technique for making money online consistently performs best for you?

Well I’m a web developer that likes to use a lot of diversity, but I would have to say that the content approach has always been the best model for me. My biggest skill is my SEO knowledge, and creating content sites works very well with that knowledge.

Q: How do you work for hours on end with absolutely no human interaction?

Well, to give anyone that reads this interview a little background, Janet and I had lunch yesterday and we figured out that in one area we are very different. Janet seems to really like interaction with people while she’s working. I prefer to work alone, as strange as that sounds.

To answer your question Janet, I’m just very different from most people in this area. I have a abnormally high amount of focus when I’m working on something, and distractions kill that focus for me. I can usually work two to four hours (sometimes up to 10 hours) without blinking. During some of these times that I have had huge moments of clarity that have helped my business to move forward.

To some people this trait is very strange Janet and I can understand why. Most people need constant interaction and I can understand that. As cold as this may sound, I simply don’t have that need. One thing that might to contribute to that trait while I’m working is my ability to turn off ‘work mode’.

I live with some good friends and we are always doing stuff at night. Last night, for example, there were about 15 people at my house to just hang out and watch the Jazz game.Tonight we’re having people over for game night – it’s looking like we’re going to have about 15 people again. We’re always hanging out with different people.

I don’t really feel like I have to have as much interaction during the day because I have more than enough at night. That means that during the day I can get more work done than I would be able to do otherwise and I can still be a good friend and have a social life. There are, of course, emergencies that can pull me out of work mode – taking care of family and friends has to come before anything else or you just can’t be happy.

I’ve been writing a lot more SEO press releases again and so it’s on my mind. I want to go over the steps of writing an SEO press release.

1. Assemble the facts, news angle, and begin writing.
   To me, the best quality press releases involve actual interviewing, on the phone. There is so much more information you get by talking to someone. Sure, you can use email and that works, especially because you can’t misquote and you have a record. However, when you interview the right person, their passion for the subject can shine through and you can capture that essence in your writing. It also makes the story unique. But it takes longer.
2. Identify the keyword phrase or related phrase you want to optimize your press release for.
   This can be easy if you already know the phrase but most of the time you need to do keyword research to see the competition and demand for a keyword phrase. You may want to go for a niche keyword that you can rank for more quickly. If you choose something like “Internet marketing” then you’re up against at least 100k other web sites who want to rank for that. That’s a long-term investment.
3. Incorporate the keyword phrase into the press release.
   You need to make the keyword phrase an anchor, use it in the first sentence, title, and body of the press release. Don’t overdo it or it will look like spam. There are times I take an existing press release from a PR firm and add SEO. Otherwise you may want to start out with keyword phrase first rather than adding it later. I like my press releases to read well and the feel of them to come through first and then add keywords.
4. Submit the press release to a press release distribution service.
   This sounds easy, but this is almost as much work as writing the press release. Each press release service has different rules according to how much you pay.
   Links – Some won’t allow links, most regulate how many links your press release can have. Even the process of creating links is different for each service (and not always intuitive).
   Optimization in the code (you can’t see this because it’s just for search engines) – You might need a list of 20 related keywords and write a summary with keyword phrases. This is SEO that no one sees but is very important.
   Categorizing your press release – You may need to categorize your press release by subject and geographic areas.
   Social media optimization – You may be able to add tags or other aspects, like Digg, Delicious, etc.
   Attachments - If the service (like PRWeb) allows attachments, images, podcasts, etc, you need to identify and upload those.
   Timing- Most of the time you need to submit your release a day or more before you want it to go out. For the media, you want to make sure that’s not on a weekend.

I’ve crafted a great press release for search engines and for people. I know that my editorial score will be high so there will be upwards of 50k (conservatively) clicks. Then they change it so it sounds right to them (but messes up the search engine optimization piece). Sometimes legal, a few VPs, and directors have to buy off. That can seriously affect the success of your release (and takes much more time).

I’ve written press releases for newspapers and the media and we just faxed or emailed them to a list. Not much thought after writing except to target the release to the right people. Writing for search engines is much more technical and takes quite a bit more time.

Feel free to add information that I may have overlooked, or reference your posts about SEO press releases. Within the SEO industry we know a lot and none of this is news to you. However, I wanted to distinguish the difference between regular press releases and SEO optimized press releases.

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I just read a feature about blogger John Chow on the Unusual Business Ideas that Work blog. I met John Chow at Blogworld a few months ago. The post talks about how much he’s made from blogging – $25k a month. He started out making $300 a month. He spends about $550 a month in expenses. He’s only been blogging for a little over a year.

The article talks about how he makes money giving away his ebook free (with affiliate links). The article says he uses more than 100 ad networks, like AuctionAds and Kontera ContentLink. 100 ad networks – my head hurts thinking about managing that!

“There are no rules or limits in blogging,” he said. “Your earning power is only limited by the traffic you can attract.” Which is the same with web sites, only blogs take a lot less effort to update.

Today my business partner and I met Courtney Tuttle (you should read his blog too). We discussed how web sites attract people once and they usually don’t return. Blogs create a community that people return to again and again to read the latest. That’s why blogs and social networks have such marketing power.

They sum up with this: Blogging isn’t just a pastime or marketing gambit anymore; it’s a living.

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I’m going to save you a lot of pain and money. When businesses are new to blogging they often want to set up their own blogging software or platform. Don’t do it. Use WordPress. It’s customizeable, has many plugins, and it’s free (be sure to host it on your own server, with your own domain name, the free software download is available at www.wordpress.org).

When you join WordPress you take advantage of all of the innovation. You belong to a community of people who use WordPress. It will have the features your readers expect and know how to use.

I’m getting into creating small business web sites built on WordPress. It has a CMS to manage the site and it also has a blog. This is perfect for driving traffic to your new site. Blogs are made to be rapidly updated and they ping search engines every time you write. It’s also inexpensive (around $300-$500) and quick.

When I write a blog post it is in the search engines within an hour – usually within ten minutes (I know because I set up Google alerts). Through regular updates I’ve gotten search engines to index my blog very quickly. You can too.

I had a consulting gig last year that had me write an SEO press release every week. I had no access to stats and that severely hampered my ability to improve and learn from all of the data. I like seeing what combination of techniques and PR distribution services work best for different business objectives. In other words, I would go for lower cost services just for SEO and save the more dynamic news for higher priced services that target search engines and the media.

The client was extremely protective of me and his company, so I can’t use any of the press releases as references. I’m sure that at least one got a very quick #5 ranking for the keyword I optimized for. I do have to say my opinion (because I can now) and that is don’t write a press release just for the backlink. Make sure you actually have news.

Does anyone else run into this issue? When you do work for clients, how do you quantify your work? They’ve told me how effective they have been but too often I don’t have numbers, and I need numbers. Stats are my reward (along with money, the lifeblood of any business).

There is a lot of news going on in a company that is overlooked. However, just releasing news so you have new content is not a good strategy – that is a strategy for a blog post where you can update frequently without needing a full blown news angle or story. I also learned it’s a bad idea to mix SEO blogging with community blogging (more on that later). Eventually it proved too expensive for the client, which isn’t surprising at all. BTW, I found the business blog I wrote that I thought was gone).
Ideally, you combine a blogging and press release strategy which reinforce each other. Then you can add social media elements (Digg, delicious, etc). You can email your press releases to bloggers and post them on your social media profile on an RSS feed. I need to write a plan to do this or if you have one, please go to my contact form and you’ll go straight to my network of contacts (meaning I will forever be a resource for you back, even if years down the road you need a contact or expertise).
When I had access to stats I clearly saw how valuable a press release can be for search engines and for media attention. I know my editorial score and the reads (usually over 50k). It was well worth the spend for the traffic and visibility we got. It sure beat the cost of paid search and was a permanent link in the search engines.

Writing SEO press releases is the service I most like doing, because I love getting the story out and I get to use my SEO/internet marketing skills too. I love to write press releases that involve interviewing a person. Those become my best work because I really like people more than computers. The best press releases hit both search engines and are also meaningful and useful to people (the media, the public, etc, depending on your goals).

p.s. My blog URLs are fixed.

I wanted to link to an earlier post about Walmart and then I discovered something: my blog is messed up. None of my permanent links work [this has since been fixed]. I can’t quite express how I feel about the fact that almost 3 years of work and writing is inaccessible to the search engines right now. [Now I can express this - I'm glad they are back!].
I won’t detail the things that have broken lately – but I’m fixing them just as fast as they break. When things like this happen in my life it is a sign – a sign that it’s time for some changes. If you read my blog you can see this theme build over time and it hit crescendo recently. I have honestly learned a lot about this dynamic and what it means just by blogging about it.

Internet marketing has been my passion, almost like a love affair. I ate, breathed, and lived it. I wrote about it. When I started this profession it was an enormous challenge to learn. Reading and learning about it filtered into almost every aspect of my life. Over time, starting with being laid off last year, it’s become a job. No more and no less. Still a job I love, but not with the fervor that I’ve had for four years.

It was a grand adventure. I learned the best and worst about internet marketing. I tried a lot of things. There was nothing else I’d rather talk about. But I don’t stay up all night doing Internet Marketing that often any more. I value my sleep. I’m reading about other things. I value balance. This was a horrible realization at first, one that rocked my world. But over time I see it as a necessary and healthy one. It sounds like a break up, but be assured, in this case we’re remaining close friends. lol.

If I chose a word to describe this past 6 weeks it would be: broken. The word I want for the next 6: is restoration. After that I want it to be: resurgence.

I want to distinguish that I’m not burned out. I’ve read posts from other bloggers that signal it’s time to change professions. They are very negative and say that nothing works. Internet marketing works – it’s one of the best lead generation techniques I know. I’ve detailed why several times, but no other marketing technique can you get so targeted in your message, let you measure it so precisely, and do it for such a low cost.

What I’m saying is when my day blogging and consulting ends, it ends. My attention goes to other things. And that marks a big shift in my world.

I just learned a bit more about Innuity – the company that does the Internet Marketing services for Sam’s Club. They have a tie to a Utah company that became a bit infamous – 10x Media. In 2005 Innuity acquired 10x Marketing. I didn’t know that until today.
Here’s a quote from a press release about Innuity’s earnings for the first quarter of 2006:

Innuity reported “a 317% increase from $1.2 million reported during the same quarter of 2005. Contributing significantly to this substantial revenue increase were Innuity’s 2005 strategic acquisitions: the Internet marketing company, 10x Marketing, (now Innuity’s Lead Generation Services business) and the point-of-sale systems (POS) company, Jadeon (now Innuity’s In-Store Systems business).”

First, I hope Paul Allen cashed out on the sale like he did when MyFamily.com was acquired. Second, I want to set something straight. I’ve noticed how the blogosphere has blasted Sam’s Club (or WalMart) SEO or Internet Marketing services. Of course I can see why – because it brings a certain connotation – that of cheapness.

As professionals, we like to think that we are exclusive or elite, not something you can pick up at a discount retailer. But remember, though the services are being offered through Sam’s Club, the work is done by a reputable company. I will try out their services and as always, report back.

“…even years after beginning the process of starting a business, only one-third of people have a new company with positive cash flow greater than the salary and expenses of the owner for more than three consecutive months.”

This from Guy Kawasaki’s blog and it relates to what I’ve been writing about and thinking about lately. This is a guest post with ten myths of entrepreneurship. Before you think I’m down on entrepreneurs, let me stop right here.

Being an entrepreneur in the stage I’ve been at is hell at times (and I think if it truly was for me I would recognize the challenges but still want to plug on). I’m both the technician and the manager and so is Paul. This is a pretty predictable stage until you can hire out one side and focus on the other.

Here’s another quote:

“The typical profit of an owner-managed business is $39,000 per year. Only the top ten percent of entrepreneurs earn more money than employees. And the typical entrepreneur earns less money than he otherwise would have earned working for someone else.”

But we’re so optimistic that we’ll be the exception. And a lot of us are. But, if you knew that’s about what you’d make – $39k a year, would it be worth it to you? Even if it meant you work far more hours than a typical job with no benefits? I know so many people who’ve done far better than that. It’s just that it it’s usually a very long term investment and sometimes means going without a lot for a long time.

Side note: It’s amazing how long it takes to build blog readership and how quickly it can tank if you slow down and stop blogging. My blog was down for a long time before I even knew about it. An hour on the phone with technical support and now I’m up again, (but things aren’t quite right – starting with having to disable every single plugin). I started this blog for me and it’s still for me, recording a journey.

What I’ve found lately is how difficult it is for me to separate life and work – something I never considered a problem before (but those around me probably did think it was). It’s a good sign in some ways, but a transition nonetheless. It frees me up to take on other passions and expand a bit.

What I’m saying is, when you’re in love with something you will give it everything and the ride is fun, not harrowing. Many times entrepreneurs love what they do. They don’t mind the sacrifices because of the benefits.

What about you: are you enjoying the ride? What stage are you in? What’s next for you? How does the money play into it? What have you learned? (maybe you should read The Entrepreneur Story for inspiration?)

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As I was catching up on my blog reader today, I did a double take on this revelation: Sam’s Club (or WalMart) offers Internet Marketing services. The company that offers the services is called Innuity. It’s not new but I’ve never heard of it until today. I spoke to them to find out more.

First, Sam’s Club members get a free web site. It will be yourbusinessname.samsbiz.com until you get your own domain. 5 pages, content only (no shopping cart). For $10 a month you can get a CMS template ecommerce site. For $900 they will design the site (you write the content).

If you want to run PPC advertising to your site, for a minimum of $50 per month for 6 months, they will set it up in 4 days. Google only unless you want to spend more ($200+). About 15% of this is administration fees and the rest is for your ad budget.
Otherwise there are SEO services of $500 per month for a minimum of 6 months. That includes an article a week and landing pages for your top keywords. Basically building links.

So does this mean Internet marketing has officially hit the mainstream? And who is doing the work? Are the services any good? Anyone tried it or have any insights?

Next thing you know they will offer business blogging and email marketing

Update: Innuity is quite saavy, despite the connotations of working with Sam’s Club. I got two emails from them the day I wrote this post (without so much as a trackback to alert them). They have 30,000 clients and focus on taking “enterprise” level internet solutions to the small business owner. Like most SEO companies, their target market – small business owners – often don’t know they need or can afford Internet marketing.

They have larger clients that include well-known companies like: Overstock, ADP, and Amazon.