

Aaron Wall on Mixergy - sgman
http://mixergy.com/seobook-aaron-wall/

======
patio11
I've learned quite a bit on Aaron's SEOBook forums about SEO. (Disclosure:
after spending entirely too much time there apparently saying useful stuff he
made me a moderator, but I'm not compensated for recommending it to you.)

Ironically, I've learned _more_ about generic marketing topics. Probably the
most consequential single piece of advice was Aaron rewriting two lines of
copy on my purchasing page to emphasize what people were getting as opposed to
what I was selling.

I've harped on "benefits not features" for _years_ , but what was I talking
about next to the freaking buy button? The fact that they'd be "purchasing a
single copy", which tells the customer absolutely nothing of value (99.9% of
my customers purchase a single copy, literally). Aaron swapped in "Buy now and
get instant access via download" (this is something to highlight to customers
who are often busy preparing a lesson for _tomorrow_ ). My conversion rate
went up by about 10%, and two years later that single tweak has been worth
thousands.

The copy tweak is what always sticks out in my mind, but I've gotten some very
valuable SEO advice, too. My mini-site strategy, for example, was heavily
informed by advice from Aaron and the guys, and it has worked out very well
for me.

I wish startups were more appreciative about SEO as a channel. I think many,
many of the folks here could use it to great effect.

------
xiaoma
> _"There's a bit of free-tard culture stuff... The truth is that if you let
> those people influence your decision making too much then all you're doing
> is sacrificing your own quality of life to like uh, appease a bunch of
> abusive, worthless sacks of crap that don't care about you, so yes you'll
> always get blow-back when you try to charge for something, but you can't
> like, you can't internalize it too much because it's mostly like a
> reflection of those people's internal lack of self-esteem and internal lack
> of value that..."_

Those must have been some terrible emails! It's kind of surprising that the
had that problem since only the new customer's rates went up (and existing
customers kept their old rates). Then again with enough traffic... I suppose
you'll be visited by all types.

~~~
aaronwall
The thing is ... the harmful emails are _never_ really from paying customers.
They are almost always from freetards who remind you that...

\- you are expected to provide phone support to them (even though they are not
a paying customer & have no intent of being one!)

\- you are wrong to set up any type of conversion funnel for the 1% of people
who will convert (but which costs the freetard type as much as 30 seconds of
their time as well)

\- accuses you of selling their email information (when you have not), curses
at you, is shocked when you dish them back any of their own cooking, and then
calls you non-professional

\- they sign up for your free autoresponder series (which is more valuable
than most paid courses on SEO) then takes the time to send you a nasty email
rather than clicking the unsubscribe link in the emails

\----

I didn't have to deal with tons of this stuff when I set up our paid
membership site. I mean some...but a fairly small amount. Where the entitled
freetard type became enraged was when I set up a conversion funnel and
required registering a free account to get our firefox extensions.

And in our support software the contrast between paid customers and freetards
is almost unbelievable. As an extreme comparison, the paid person could have
an issue like being locked out of their account (which they are paying for)
and label it as an issue of low or medium concern and write a polite "please
help" type message ... whereas the freetard who is not a paying customer (and
will never be one) typically labels their issues as urgent or critical.

\-------

The other thing freetards try to do is try to bully you on social networks and
stuff and threaten to destroy your brand if you don't self-implode your
business model to support their rude behavior.

Some of our posts about freetard culture...

[http://www.seobook.com/are-you-fighting-human-nature-
measuri...](http://www.seobook.com/are-you-fighting-human-nature-measuring-
opportunity-cost)

[http://www.seobook.com/i-stopped-caring-about-links-well-
alm...](http://www.seobook.com/i-stopped-caring-about-links-well-almost)

<http://www.seobook.com/professionalism>

[http://www.seobook.com/why-many-successful-people-become-
jer...](http://www.seobook.com/why-many-successful-people-become-jerks)

and people far smarter than I have noticed the freetard culture phenomena
being harmful to business
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12tier.html>

"The basic idea of this contract," he writes, "is that authors, journalists,
musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects
and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind.
Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely
nothing but advertising."

and, as a sharp contrast to freetard behavior, this post mentions how private
paid communities have mechanisms in place that prevent the above types of
abuses amongst customers (namely people who pay are of higher quality, and
people won't make absurd demands in front of others)

<http://www.seobook.com/why-private-communities-work-so-well>

------
Chirael
Am I the only one for whom pages like this just seem extremely spammy?

~~~
chaosmachine
Pages like what? It's a very interesting and content-rich interview. Kind of
surprised it doesn't have more upvotes, actually.

