SEO vs Paid Traffic (20)
Hi guys, I'm back for now. I wanted to ask this questions since day 1. Give me reasons in motion of either of them. Currently I'm doing SEO. Ranked one niche and making $200-$400 per day(pure profit).
Although Google is pretty unreliable but for another 6 months I should be carefree till they rollout another animal.
I don't have to touch anything for now. Site will keep making money till it deranks, so it give me time to work on another projects.
Those are merits of SEO. But I want good discussion on why would you choose either SEO or Paid Adverts.
Thanks for replying.
If SEO is working for you, that's great. By all means, milk it for all it is worth.
However,
1. The best, most sustainable relationships in business (and in life), are ones where both sides benefit from the relationship.
In paid marketing, at least you have a better alignment of interests. As long as you pay, the media channel benefits. This does not mean that you can do anything you want, but at least there is a reason for the media channel to at least spare a little thought to your situation and what may or may not be in your interest.
2. SEO is not free.
With paid marketing, this is a matter of hours, with SEO, it can be a matter of months.
3. There are many more transferable skills in paid marketing vs. SEO
A lot of the skills required for Facebook paid marketing, for example, can much more easily be transferred to RTB display, native advertising, Twitter, mobile app downloads, etc etc. That is because many of these skills are not specific to a single media channel but instead are applicable to a wide range of marketing activities.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Thanks for response and your points are valid. But what would you say about the situation where you are at verge of scaling it big and at that moment that particular offers is pulled by advertisers? Doesn't that happens more often? This is the only reason I'm afraid to get into it seriously.
Originally Posted by hunterxhunter
But how would you feel if you spent 1 year building and ranking SEO sites for a specific niche, and then the advertisers pulled them as well? And now you need to spend another year.
The problem of advertisers pulling offers remains the same, whether it is SEO or paid. The difference is in the speed in which you can adapt to this when it happens.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
I was also a big SEO fanboy earlier this year and thought paid traffic affiliates snubbed SEOs for no reason sometimes... but since I've joined STM and have gone deeper down the rabbit hole, I'm a 100% paid traffic convert now.
Why? For all the reasons cmdeal mentioned above, and also, you look around in *any* niche/industry making money online, you'll often find that the players focusing on paid traffic are making a lot more than SEOs.
The only other kind of internet marketing that I still see extremely valuable, that's not paid traffic, is viral marketing. PlentyofFish is a great example of an internet property that blew up because of virality.
"If your product isn't viral and you're not paying for users, you're most likely going to fail." - https://twitter.com/jonathanvolk/sta...49154622369792
Really interesting topic.
Right now I'm 100% SEO. I like SEO for all the aspects you mention, like earning cash for months (sometimes years) in a passive way when your websites continue to rank.
Of course, like many guys I've lost tons of websites and money over the years with panda and penguin mostly. But the fact is that today I still earn a lot with SEO, way more than a few years before.
But...
I've just finish to read the book "How to get rich" from Felis Dennis and it make me thinking.
The guy is one of the richest in his country, he has make a fortune in the magazine business.
One quote what make me think in that book :
The truth is I led myself to believe I had fallen in love with publishing. That wasn’t a tragedy in itself, but I allowed my liking for the magazine publishing business to blinker me from so many other avenues where I could have coined cash. If you have entrepreneurial flair, then you can go into just about any business and make money. But instead of rushing to where the money was, I kept on digging in the relatively poor pit of ink-on-paper until the money, reluctantly, came to me. This is so important, gentle reader. It pains me to think about it. If you wish to become rich, look carefully about you at the prevailing industries where wealth appears to be gravitating. THEN GO TO WHERE THE MONEY IS! That is where you should focus your efforts.
I wonder if I'm not in the same situation, had been in SEO for more than 10 years now making $XX,XXX profits per month all that time. But what if I move to paid traffic, focus my skill on it and make $XXX,XXX profits per month ? Am I digging where the money really is, or am I just doing pretty well where the money is not really ?
I guess that the only solution to get the answer is to try 
Originally Posted by givizator
“No,” is the reply, "I am pretty sure it was somewhere else."
“Then why are you looking here?” asks the surprised and irritated officer.
"I am looking here" the man replies, "because there is good light around here from this lampost".
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Yeah, that's a fantastic book. almost as good as "your first 100 million" by dan pena
Paid traffic for me.
It's a more valuable skill.
If you know what you're doing with paid traffic, your skills are transferrable to just about any property that is selling its media. The potential to scale is infinitely larger.
If you know SEO, in contrast, your entire expertise is pinned to the whims of a search engine -- and more importantly, somebody else's company.
I know some seriously talented SEO guys, and I'm jealous of the results they produce. It must be an incredibly rewarding feeling to get a site to the top of Google and cash the cheques without having to pay for the ads. But it's not a skill I would dedicate my career to whilst the job title is prefixed 'At Google's Mercy'.
Thank you all for your input. I will invest my SEO profit into paid adverts. Once again thank you all.
Man i am a seo guy also. I bank around 500 $ per day in profits. I raise the money to get back into paid area. I like the chalange. And like finch said you are not at the mercy of google. Do not get me wrong. I didn't got hit by any of those updates but SEO it's time consuming and i really want something that can bank me good without having my time dedicated to sustaining the websites.
Their is a point I'd like to bring to the discussion :
One is doing SEO, he has a bunch of websites that are doing well, he is stacking $XX,XXX of profits each months.
The other is doing SEM, he has several campaigns running, he is also stacking $XX,XXX of profits each months.
Both want to move on to something else and are ready to sell their assets.
Depending on the markets the websites are in and their histories (panda, penguin, etc), the first guy will sell the websites for 1 to 5 years of gains.
I'd like to have an overview of the situation of the second guy. He has campaigns, but we know that's something more volatile than a website.
Can he sell that, what is the value of his assets ?
I don't want to say that SEO is more valuable than SEM on the long run because you can sell you assets for a lot of cash. But that's a big part of the profit you make doing SEO and I'd like to know how you guys, doing SEM approch this ?
Thanks !
Originally Posted by givizator
I discussed a few of these valuation drivers here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...l=1#post130363
Originally Posted by cmdeal
That was a really impressive sell, congratulations !
You're right, the value of an enterprise depends on a number of factors. But I think that most affiliates here (at least those who are talking about $XXX profit per day) are more to be "individuals" than "enterprises".
Most of the guys here broke your first rule, they are the business, they build the campaigns and without them, nothing can happen.
Usually, in the $XXX profits per day range, in SEO, it's the same story. It's one guys building websites and that's all. But if the two guys stop working right now, the SEO guys still have his websites while the first one have his campaigns for the time they die.
My feeling is like webdev said on you thread, what is the point of building campaigns if they die so quickly that you have to make new one each week ? You will never have something to sell that way. But maybe you make 20x the money for the same time you invest than the SEO guy had ?
Will you be at the STM event in march ? I will be really pleased to meet you there !
SEO is not free, its fixed cost
There is no direct connection between visitor to amount payed for banner
SEO is also lost tons of players last year so bigger chunck to those who stay
If you decide to go into paid media try to enter a niche you have passion for
it might help you overcome the challanges..
I had xxx$ days with SEO before all the animals..
it was the grants for single mom niche..
but I am not regret moving to paid media
And need to happen something very specail to go back doing seo..
paid media has much more andernalin and excitments than SEO
so I think its really hard to go back..
Originally Posted by givizator
A lot of people struggle to make the transition from SEO to paid. And for good reason. Only a very small number of skills that are required for success in SEO are applicable to many other aspects of marketing.
A lot of the skills required for Facebook paid marketing, for example, can much more easily be transferred to RTB display, native advertising, Twitter, mobile app downloads, etc etc. That is because many of these skills are not specific to a single media channel but instead are applicable to a wide range of marketing activities.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
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