People Drive Your Business, Not Search Engines

I have recognized an incredibly dangerous trend: marketing for search engines, and not the people that use them. In fact, I'm willing to bet the majority of affiliate marketers out there trying to make money, yet failing, are those who focus too much of their energy on search engines.

Imagine this is a poll. How many of you reading this believe that search engines are the key to your business?

That was a test, anyone that answered "I do" is wrong.

Try not to be insulted.

Although many people try to deny it, there are only two forms of article marketing.

The first is filled with people who are trying to drive as much traffic to their site as possible.

The second is filled with people who give as much value as they can, and get clicks from people who want that value.

Trust me when I say that you want to be the second kind of person.

Here's the deal: when you write for search engines, and care little about the people reading your articles, then you aren't creating a business.

A business online is just like a business in the flesh. People come into your store, browse around, and listen to your sales pitch.

If you keep pitching them garbage, and all they find in your store is garbage, it doesn't matter if your store comes up #1 on Google or whatever, you won't make money.

People are the key to your business.

Not search engine optimization, algorithms, or numbers.

Once you focus on the people, money will follow.

For example, if people read this article, and are inspired by it, they will go to my website below, and enjoy the information provided.

If they enjoy that information, then I can start building a relationship with them. I can contact them, and give them what they need.

I'll scratch their back, and point them in the right direction. But in return, they scratch mine.

If you stop imagining your online business as this big ogre trying to take money away from innocent people, then you'll find your profits, just like I have.

People read articles, people share articles, and people make you money.

It all comes down to that.

So who cares if this article is optimized? Who cares if I don't have enough key words, and I'm not getting the most out of my site's ranking? As long as I'm providing solid content to the people who need it, I'll do just fine.

So I want you to do me a favor, and go out right now and write your own, non-optimized article. Write it without the slightest indication of search engines. Write an article to help people, and to inspire people to do better with their lives.

With Burning Cheeks (Funeral for a Mother)

"There is nothing cheerful or comforting in the death of a mother," thought Evens, "people only distract from the grieving process. Most whom come to funerals," he thought, "are deeply lacking in the sense of sacredness of privacy."

He had respected and loved his mother while she lived, and wanted to be alone with her now that she was dead, to keep her urn, in his living room.

"So many take away the grip that you once had of her memory, it slips from your hands. It is good sense," he told the other person inside of him "to pay them no attention as they look and listen, wait, listening to their breathing, waiting for the storm of curiosity." Thus he came to realize such events, this event with the people involved only made the few like him suffer all the more horrors. And in the face of fact, his mother's long hard role in life was now at its end, and being played out he didn't care to hear any noises of people beating the anvil for attention and gossip, at the funeral.

He went to a bookstore, put his head down, his hands into his face, became near to an unconscious state, feeling the sensation God had created, called grief, waiting for the full visualization of Heaven's parading, for her arrival, to be ended.

"Those people," he murmured, while sitting at this café table at the bookstore, "play a life and death game, holding this, all in the fingers of their hands and feeling nothing." Then he sat back in his chair took a sip of his coffee, looked about.

There he said, with burning cheeks, listening to the dead woman's whispering "I'm okay with it, I was ready..., would you have liked me to live the way I was?"

A shill runs through him, Diane, his friend showed up, sat down by him, her mother had died recently. He didn't want company, but he allowed it.

"I'll perhaps become the scandal of the family for not showing up at the funeral," he told her.

"We all grieve in our own ways," she remarked.

He passed with him the night in the heat of the summer in his small apartment on Albemarle Street, tears came into his eyes. For a long time he walked airlessly here and there. The thrill of summer was in the air, and the sparrows sang in the trees, he planned a trip to the Galapagos.

But for that moment, from that moment-death took on a new picture, a new seriousness, accompanied by voices, dread of people, not dread of people per se but that they would not allow him to grieve in his own way. "Did God send this sorrow as a warning for me to get ready? A reminder that time is short, to find that narrow path?"

"To speak ill of another person while in grieving, is utterly bad," thought Evens. "But it is the other side of a person's face you see, you must catch it before it vanishes, disappears, lest it get away and you become blind to this unspeakable blankness." It brings to mind all eager days the same folks had greeted him with warmly not so long ago. How they gossiped over the daily details of life; the sensational events in newspapers, television; and now their revolting cries, unable to restrain their curiosity why he didn't go to the funeral, and other why's and questions. There horrid mess of gossip over and over on their tongues.

He had come to the conclusion, such people: "They live their lives stretched out," he told that hidden voice inside of him, "fixed in houses, all linking one to another. Year after year, washing the same dishes, ironing the same clothes, with only their fingers occupied. Thus minds reading trash, if reading anything at all. They live in empty rooms in the dark, waiting, hurriedly eating, sleeping, gossiping, waiting for the blessing of the community, with their fixed ideas and clinging onto them; having taken their heavy eyes off their sins to get that morsel of something to chew on, with those loose tongues; to die unseen, unknown, hoping for a new life to come, wasting the one they now live."

No: 790 (4-6-2011)

SA

Two Old Women

The Chief's announcement that the old women be left behind to fend for themselves, sends the wrong message to his people. It signifies what happens to those who adopt the habits of old women, i.e. carrying walking sticks, complaining of aches and pains, etc. The chief confers with himself and delivers a morally incorrect choice. His word is law, and the people blindly accept it, knowing that collectively, they've issued a death sentence. After all, the old women don't hunt, and are most likely incapable of defending themselves from wolves, bears and worst ... cannibals.

According to Kohlberg's stages of moral development, the people have arrived at a post conventional dilemma; what should be done for the greater good? Rather than ask themselves how the actions of the two women impact their survival, and at least one person stepping forward to express it, the two old women are cast away like yesterday's garbage. The chief's directive is law and accepted unconditionally. As a result, over time, he behaves more like a governor, rather than a shepherd. He's forgotten that every life is significant, and everyone has something to offer towards the greater good.

Before the separation, Ozhii Nelii leaves a "bundle of babiche" [thickly stripped raw moose hide that served many purposes] for her mother, and Shruh Zhuu secretly leaves his hatchet where the old women can find it. The two old women are less concerned with the valuable tools, than with the backs of people trudging forward without them. They are angry and stunned, but to Sa's credit, they do not despair. She rallies the older companion, and probably with her fists raised up to the heavens, shouts "If we are going to die, my friend, let us die trying, not sitting".

We learn, as the chief must have also surely forgotten, you don't become an eighty or seventy-five year old nomad without survival skills. The women are next creating traps out of the babiche, and successfully slinging the hatchet for squirrel meat. They remember a place where the fishing was abundant and wonder aloud why they never returned. Possibly another of the chief's blunders.

They create snow shoes out of more of the babiche, and head for better eating. Along the way they continue to trap various critters, and outfox a bear.

Sa' is physically stronger and naturally adventurous. On one of her frequent wanderings, she encounters a full grown bull moose, and a field of berries. She remembers what moose-meat tastes like, and actually attempts to knock the moose upside the head. At this point, I gotta ask who died and made that guy chief. These old ladies are not only surviving, but thriving. According to Erikson's development psychology, the old women's separation from the people have allowed them to become productive rather than useless; rich in foodstuffs, survival gear, and experience. Everything a growing nomad needs.

The author tells a story handed down to her that must have instantly become classic. Its message is more than just another example of "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger". It's a story of perseverance after abandonment, and under possibly, some of the worst conditions. To be eighty or near eighty on some frozen tundra, miles away from civilization, at zero degree temperatures, starving and left to die. Surely many, and younger, have perished under similar conditions. It's a remarkable story, and a book I'll keep.

A year passes, and the old women learn more about themselves and each other. The walking sticks are long gone, and the complaints of aches and pains have been replaced with grimaces and pained physical expressions. The skins and furs from the many animals they've trapped are woven into many various articles of clothing. They've settled where the fish are abundant, and where their presence is not easily ascertained by predators or those damn cannibals. The old women have enjoyed good fortune, but still wonder about the family and life they once had, and the people.

After the long cold season, the chief and his people return, and begin searching for the remains of the old women. The chief's conscience (and probably a year of stares from Shruh Zhuu and his mom) influences this decision. Once again, the people arrive to this place starving, but in fewer numbers. The chief is confused as to why the remains of the women are not easily found. He sends one of the elders, a tracker named Daagoo, along with several young men, to learn the fate of the two old women, and he is successful.

The old women reunite with the tribe, on their terms, but mostly out of great respect and admiration of these two wise old women. Ch'idzigyaak is reunited with her family, and along with her younger companion, assume a position of respect among the people. The tribe learns never to abandon another elder, but probably because the chief never becomes an elder.