Idiot Guest Post Blogger knows nothing about Fishing or Hunting annoys SEO Expert

By C. M. - September 19th 2017.

Okay, so on a daily basis I get requests from self-styled "freelance writers" who want to do a guest post on one of my 100+ blogs. (Yes, I have a lot of blogs - some of them are very popular too.)

Most of the time I delete such emails because they are a waste of time (they just want free advertising and are too cheap to pay for it). Sometimes when there is a chance they will actually buy advertising (actually pay for it), then I shall respond.

Sometimes, on rare occasions, I might even respond because they are proposing a topic I find to be interesting. My curiousity gets the better of me because I am truly interested to see what they have to say about a particular topic.

Six days ago a "freelance writer" contacted me asking to do a guest post on one of my blogs that is about a variety of "outdoorsy topics", including fishing, hunting, gardening, foraging, camping, DIY projects, off grid living, alternative energy, etc. The name of the website is Project Gridless.

So this writer contacts me and says he can write about the following topics:

1. Hunting and Fishing

2. Spotting Scopes

3. Shooting and Outdoor niche

I didn't really want to read the dribble he would be possibly be spewing about hunting, shooting or scopes - so I gave him some limited options of writing about fishing or a different outdoors topic.

So he chose the fishing option.

Today he got back to me with a horribly written article (containing a link to a website that sells rifle scopes, so it was obviously just advertising).

Now as someone who has shot rifles, including rifles with scopes, I was really disgusted by the vomit level quality of his writing. So annoyed I wrote the following response:

Hey Eric!

The post you sent is useless. The article basically only pretends to be a fishing article, but is just an article about rifle scopes.

Whoever wrote that article should be fired. It is not even well written and whomever wrote it evidently knows diddly squat about both fishing and rifle scopes. Whomever wrote it clearly had never adjusted the sight on a rifle scope before, and it showed in the writing that they knew nothing about the topic and were just spewing garbage. If you wrote that yourself, you should be ashamed to call yourself a freelance writer. It is pure vomit.

If you recall on Sept. 19th I recommended writing a fishing post on the following topics:

"fly fishing, fishing for trout, bass, or any kind of freshwater fish found in the Great Lakes"

I counted and while you did use the words fish or fishing 13 times, the article is much more about hunting with a rifle scope and contains the words hunt or hunting 14 times.

You mentioned fly fishing 0 times.

Trout 0 times.

Bass 0 times.

Great Lakes 0 times.

When you first wrote me back on September 19th you expressed an interest in writing about the following three topics:

1. Hunting and Fishing

2. Spotting Scopes

3. Shooting and Outdoor niche

Those topics suggested that you perhaps had some knowledge in those areas. Surveying the topics I determined we were only interested in topics about fishing or "general outdoors". That basically means hunting, scopes, and "shooting" is off limits for a topic.

However judging by the vomit you sent me, whoever wrote it knows sweet-****-all about both rifle scopes and fishing, and has no business writing about topics they are ignorant of.

If you want me to post an article about fishing, write an article about actual fishing - and it had better be a knowledgeable and well written article. No more vomit.

And after sending that email I was still so annoyed I felt this deserved an angry blog post.

My official opinion of "freelance writers" is that the vast majority of them are ignorant morons.

And "guest posts", as you may have already have guessed, are a complete waste of time unless the writer is willing to pay $$$ for the advertising privilege.

Sometimes in the past I have also written up an email response to these daily requests to do guest posts. Something like the following:

Dear Advertiser

Thank you for contacting me. I get at least a hundred of these "guest post" request emails per month. They are actually really annoying. So here is the thing: I have bills to pay and little free time to deal with annoying cheapskates. Unless you are willing to pay $$$ for the privilege of advertising on one or more of my websites then I ask that you don't waste my time. Any requests to get a "free guest post" will be deleted / marked as spam. I have no time for annoying people who cannot read instructions and don't understand that when running a business TIME = MONEY. Stop wasting my time unless you have money to pay for your advertising.

Call it a pet peeve if you want, but consider the following.

The average life expectancy of a Canadian is currently 82.14 years.

82.14 years x 364.25 days per year x 24 hours = 718,067.88 hours of life expectancy.

Since I am currently 38.5 years old, I have already used up 336,567 hours of my life expectancy. So I have already used up almost half of my allotment of hours, assuming that I don't die sooner somehow?

Why should I waste any hours of my remaining time answering emails from moronic cheapskates?

Have a nice day!

PS. I am contacting the company the moron Eric works for and am going to tell them to fire him. They should not be wasting their money on halfwits.

Reviewing a Google Adwords Campaign that has come to an end

Sept. 4th 2017.

Today I put an end to the longest running PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising campaign I have ever done.

It start in November 2013.

And ended September 4th 2017.

The campaign was a deliberately slow one - the focus was on quality clicks, not quantity.

The budget, $289.98 spread over almost 4 years. (Approx. 3.833 years.)

1307 clicks, averaging 22.1866 cents per click.

So it was a slow campaign, heavy on quality - with a strong focus on keeping the price of individual clicks low.

And it supported a thriving business, while simultaneously competing with a number of competitors who were trying to get a quantity of lesser quality clicks.

Annually, between the PPC and an active SEO campaign, the combined advertising brought in hundreds of clients per year.

Because it was a seasonal business the campaign was sometimes paused during winter, but as Spring approached the campaign would be resume and clients would start flooding in pre-ordering for Spring and Summer.

While the number of clicks did vary per year, on average the campaign had 341 clicks per year.

With overall number of clients per year somewhere in the 300 to 400 range.

So how much of that was clients who arrived via PPC and how many arrived via SEO?

Truth is, we don't know.

But since designSEO.ca did both the PPC and SEO advertising for the client, they were very happy with the results either way.

Basically what we did was stack the deck.

#1. We had a quality based PPC campaign that brought in potential clients who were far more likely to actually buy the service provided.

#2. We had an aggressive SEO campaign that put the client's websites at the top of the Google search results in multiple keyword categories.

#3. "We stacked the deck and cheated" - we bought a domain name that was very useful to the client and made it the #1 most useful website in Toronto for the type of people who would be purchasing the client's services. Ergo, build an useful website and the people will come.

Bonus - designSEO.ca now makes advertising profits off of the website we made, because we own the website, not the client, and their competitors now have to bid to advertise on our website.

The campaign has ended because the client has decided to retire / take a break from that business to focus on their family and a new baby. We wish them well!

Designer Hourly Rates Versus Package Rates

Years ago I used to be a freelance website designer and at the time I charged an hourly rate of $20. However since many clients would want a "package rate" I would need to quote a specific price for a job based on a time estimate of how much time I thought it would take to do the job, assuming they didn't ask for any changes which added up to extra time.

So for example if I thought a project might take 30, 40 or 50 hours I would quote them $600, $800 or $1000 respectively - bearing in mind that if a project goes overtime, I don't get paid anything extra. So if I quote 30 hours to complete a task and it takes 40 or 50, I don't get paid anything extra because it was my fault for not quoting a more accurate price.

So when a client then asks for a "discount rate" or $300 or $400 for a $600 job, think about how much I get paid per hour if the job goes overtime?

At $400 for 40 hours I am suddenly getting $10/hour, which is less than minimum wage in Ontario.

At $400 for 50 hours I am now getting $8/hour, which is ridiculous. I got paid that much when doing heavy labour in a welding shop 20 years ago. This shows you how much minimum wage has improved in the last 20 years.

At $300 for 40 hours I am now getting an awful $7.50/hour.

At $300 for 50 hours I would be getting a pathetic $6/hour.

So when a client asks for a discount rate, the proper response is:

"That is the discount rate."

Also I later jacked up my hourly rate to $25, then $30, and eventually to $35/hour - which is my current rate for doing website design.

Also I now explain to clients when they ask for a website design that we agree to the design of the website in advance and any "changes" they want to the website after it is completed is billed separately. I am not doing endless edits for people who cannot make up their mind about what shade of blue they want for their website.

"Oh, I don't like that new blue. Can you make it more like a sky blue, but like greyer?"

Yes. Yes, I can. But I am not changing it again unless you are paying me for my time.