Menu

• Dictionary
• Hot Shots

Directory

• Sponsors
• Billing Options
• Content Providers
• Web Hosting
• Traffic Counters
• Website Designers
• Resource Sites

Industry message boards are interesting places. Every one has an opinion about everything and they're not slow to let everyone know what that opinion is. Lots of those opinions are based on nothing more that the inexperience of the person who holds the opinion while others are based on a very narrow view of the world.

One opinion that always leaves me shaking my head is the one that seems to appear whenever people are looking for search engine optimization specialists. That opinion goes something like this ... 'don't waste your time looking for anyone like that because all the good ones will be working on their own projects and the only ones left will be the deadbeats'.

Or to put it another way ... 'all the good ones are too busy making money from their own projects and the only ones you'll find here are those that can't make money for themselves'.

I think that view says far more about the narrow focus of the person making the comment than whether the good search engine optimization specialists really are working only for themselves. I guess that if money were the only thing that motivated people then perhaps there would be a lot of truth in those views but the fact is that not everyone is motivated by greed.

Of course, any person who specializes in just about any field that has to do with Internet marketing might make more money if they work only on their own projects but after you've done that for a few years boredom can easily set in. Now if you're new to this industry you may wonder what on earth I'm talking about but boredom does become a problem for some people.

You may find it hard to believe but after looking at naked females almost every day for a few years many webmasters begin to find porn boring. After optimizing the same type of page or website over and over again search engine optimization specialists can become bored too ... even if they are working on their own projects and making lots of money.

And one way to cure that boredom is to branch out and do different things. When you have the challenge of doing search engine optimization for a mainstream business the boredom quickly goes. When you're building a mainstream website for a business other than your own there are new challenges to overcome, different ways of doing things and before you know it the boredom has gone.

That's one of the reasons why Steve and I find our business so challenging. We're not doing the same thing over and over again because we're taking our expertise to a different world and we're offering that expertise to mainstream and adult businesses that are not like anything we've been involved in before.

This week we've been approached by five different mainstream businesses to build websites for them. Each one is totally different from the others, the search engine optimization work for each one is totally different and the design and text that's needed to sell the five products will be completely different too.

When you're dealing with everything from a medium to a furniture store and competing for a good placement in search engine results pages that are dominated by .gov sites for another client there's no chance to get bored.

And sometimes the lack of boredom and the continual challenges has a monetary value to it that some of us are prepared to trade off against the income we could otherwise be making if we only worked on our own projects.

I know that those with a very narrow focus are not going to understand that. They'll view what I've just talked about as stupid and that's ok; if those guys want to do the same thing day in and day out for the rest of their lives that's fine with me.

But that's not for me and it's not for a lot of other very talented people either. I love being able to wake up every day with new things to do with the talents and skills that I have and that's the way others see it too.

So the next time you need to find someone who has the talents and skills to do something you can't do don't hesitate to ask on the boards. You might find someone just like us who wants the challenge of doing something different and has the skills to make it happen for you.

That's when you'll realize that some people's view of the world is way too narrow.