Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

10/10/2007

Internet Marketing Services?

Filed under: Career Archive,Criticism, Marginalia, and Notes,Geek Work,Red Herrings,The Dark Side — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:39 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Crescent

Hmm, maybe I could have a second job…

So, I saw a guy adverstising on the web for “Internet Marketing Services”, specifically, “Business Blog Services” and “Social Marketing Services”. Sounds simple enough to me. Frankly, I’ve done plenty of blog work for folks and I can’t imagine adding a business component to it would be that much extra work. But, this guy was asking for $600 to set up a blog! With WordPress, I’d be done in about 30 minutes, including upload time and configuration. $600 for less than an hour worth of work… Oh, and then, if you want his “daily blogging” service, wherein he will make a blog entry for you, seven days a week, that’s $500 per MONTH! And, if you want him to optimize your blog for the search engines, that’s another one-time fee of $500.
But, what got me was the ad copy for what he called “Social Media Optimization“. That service, his site claimed, includes “Search Engine Reputation Management, Social Marketing Team Launch & Management”. “Search engine reputation management”? Are you kidding me?! For not submitting your page to the search engines too often and making some minimal effort to make sure you don’t get black-balled by Google, he’s going to actually negotiate a fee? What’s more, it’s a variable fee, no doubt based on how much you know about search engines and the web. I have a feeling that the less a customer knows, the higher the fee.

Wow, I could make a bundle at this kind of thing. If only I didn’t have ethics and the last vestige of a conscience…

(And, if you haven’t voted yet, check out the pictures from two posts ago and vote!!)

1 Comment

  1. I couldn’t see an email link on here, so I hope you don’t mind me writing to you here. I saw in your archives that you were working on a Chinese Astrology plugin, and I was wondering if you’d completed it. I’m working on an astrology website for my friend so I’m really interested in this project. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.

    Comment by PJ — 10/11/2007 @ 6:12 pm

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