The Most Important Marketing Lesson You’ll Ever Learn: Roll Your Own

Today we’re going to discuss a philosophy that is repeated throughout the halls of syndk8, and other blackhat forums everywhere. It applies to blackhats, whitehats, grayhats, and every other hat you can imagine.




It is a philosophy called “Roll Your Own”



Now, we’re not talking about marijuana, cigarettes, or cigars. We’re talking about software, ideas, concepts, and everything else related to this job we all so love.



If you read nothing else in this entry, read the introduction, and the conclusion. They are probably the most important lessons you could take away from any post I have ever made here.



Introduction

True SEO skill will not be gained at a conference, on a blog, at a conference, on a forum, or for the love of god not in an e-book(although SEOBook is a good starter in SEO, 99% of ebooks are utter shit).

Real SEO skill is gotten by absorbing what you can through those better than yourself, truly learning the thought processes behind it, and making it your own. No one ever got rich by doing the same thing as everyone else. It’s all originality, quick thinking, and staying one mental leap ahead of that guy everyone else is copying. Don’t go looking for someone to hand you success on a silver platter; it’s not going to happen.



Why I Run My Blog the Way I Do

You’ll notice on this blog, I rarely give out complete code samples or full tools. There is a reason for this. I want my readership to grow. Not in numbers, but in skill. If I hand you tools, and hand you code, it’s as if I’m handing you the answers to a math test you have to take. It’s easy, yes. But do you really gain anything from it? You gain a little. A grade, or a tool to use. But 6 months from now, that will be inconsequential. If, on the other hand, I can show you the concepts behind the tool or strategy, and you play with it, create, and make your own, you have gained infinitely more.



Why Else Is Rolling Your Own That Much Better?



If Software is Publicly Released, Then the Playing Field Becomes Level

You do not want a level playing field. You want to have the upper hand. There are very few pieces of software ever worth buying for this reason. SEO is a smaller world than you would think. Any market gets saturated, and does so quickly. Beyond that, anyone who can come up with truly innovative software is probably smart enough to realize they can make more by using it, rather than selling it for $10 on DigitalPoint. There are few exceptions.



To this day, the only SEO software I have personally purchased was XRumer.

The only other software I would consider purchasing is SpiderSpy, by Fantomaster.

The only other software in my library that I did not write myself, I got for free so that I could review it. It’s quite good, you’ll be hearing about it soon.

But even as I have these pieces of software, I do not look at them as a solution to a problem. I look at them as research into a problem. XRumer is fantastic. It taught me what a true link spammer looks like. It can break captchas like I will probably never be able. But I’m building off this knowledge, making it my own. For the software I’m reviewing? It’s teaching me too. And soon I will make it better.

The Market Evolves, Will Your Ideas and Software?

Software - Every piece of SEO software, especially blackhat software, will become outdated. It will get filtered, and become useless. How sure are you that the author of your software will keep it up to date? What if there’s nothing he can do? Do you have access to the code?

Ideas - By the time you hear about something on a forum or a blog[excepting my own, of course], chances are that it’s already on it’s way out. MySpace spam is a prime example. And guess what? It evolved. A few evolved with it. THESE were the people who got their ideas from themselves, and not an e-book. They may have heard about it on a forum or something, but I guarantee you they did not follow the so-called “guru’s” steps exactly as he put them out there. They made it better. They decided they were going to try and put that guru out of business.

In SEO, All Concepts are Inter-Related





In SEO, there are is a web of logical concepts. Understanding one gives way to another. Once you understand anchor text, you start to understand more about duplicate content filters and link velocity. Once you understand link spamming, you understand link periodocity, and high quality vs. low quality links. Once you start to understand Blogging, you begin to understand viral marketing and social news. Once you understand those, how blog farms function begins to become more apparent.

Everything is related. And skipping over one of those because you had some software pre-made for you creates a gap that makes it impossible to grasp later concepts that are essential to put you over the edge.

A good real life example of this was made clear to me awhile ago by 5ubliminal. When I began programming, I was in the 5th grade or so and attempting to learn exclusively from books. No Php.net function list. No Java API. Just books. And you know what? I honestly never learned Regular Expressions until recently. Because I took the easy way out, and did not rely on my own curiosity and intuition enough, I had a gaping hole in my knowledge.

Should I have read those books? Yes. In the same way I hope you continue reading this blog. But I should’ve allowed myself to explore and experiment more, not binding myself to them.