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Paying a competent someone a wage say: $30 - 60K plus paying the physical implementing costs to actually do internet marketing doesn't sound cheaper to me.
Although one might say; "well we already have someone in mind and paying them a wage already".
Internet marketing is not a part-time job where a couple of hours is tasked to it per week.
That person would need to drop on current responsibilities to fullfill these new ones thus you would need to hire a new employee to fill the "new Internet Marketers" old role. This seems a tad bit more expensive than outsourcing.
Correct!
I think there is definitely a market for training, but you'd have to specify that it is very time-intensive - so the company has to have someone who has the time to learn. Learning with someone who's got all the knowledge isn't hard - it's a lot easier than trying to figure it all out by yourself. So I think this would be a useful service.
For the email work I do alone would cost $40K a year to pay a company to handle it. Add another $10K - $20K a year for SEO and I have no idea how much for CPC because I never bothered to look into pricing since I figured it couldn't be that much harder than SEO.
It is my full time job. It took me about 6 months to get up to speed on all of internet marketing and I am pretty good at it now, if I do say so myself :). The thing is that I wonder sometimes if my company's money for that six months would have been better spent if they had hired someone to come in and show me the ropes for a month rather than waiting for me to figure it out on my own.
The thing is that I wonder sometimes if my company's money for that six months would have been better spent if they had hired someone to come in and show me the ropes for a month rather than waiting for me to figure it out on my own.
In the end I suppose this really depends on what "level", "who trains" and "accountability".
Obviously we are talking total competency vice a shallow understanding of Meta Tags and Cool Tools.
The best overall -- From a professional SEO (mentoring) - However, this training would produce a competitor thus the potential of lost business of the mentor. The cost therefore from an mentor's SEO perspective should be "how much potential business will I stand to lose directly from this training over the lifetime of that person". That would be considerable. Although if provided as an advance "lump-sum" $ 1/2 million in my book.
A consultant/trainer who is no longer a direct active SEO would ideally be less expensive and with an advance "lump-sum" 50K in my book would probably be a good value. This would however, be much harder to come by and training possibly less current as well. The face of the Internet changes daily - search engines, directories standards, and even ethics, are a huge issue.
I stand to believe that if a professional SEO advises a client to do "this" and they do, and "this" gets them banned, the SEO'er is liable and not just for the value of the "service fees" but for lost business potential of the client.
Argumentatively -- if you like the rewards of SEOing you had better be prepared to be held accountable for the risks involved. The potential returns of implementing SEO techniques are great to the client, and newly trained "SEO". The risks are equally as great and not just that of the client.
Either way - the costs are substantial unless you just want a "fly-by-night" course which you get fly-by-night training, and the business gets fly-by-night corporate capablities, and their clients get (and I guarantee this) fly-by-night accountability and service.
The alternative is WebmasterWorld. Its not free either - cost alot of time to read and comprehend everything. IMO anyway ;)
I like to outsource. Find the right individuals and players in the industry and hand it over to them. It's really great when they work on a comission.
j
Training someone on it is one thing, keeping the knowledge current is another full time job in itself.
One of my clients who I do consultancy work for, attended a training course for SEO, and found it very beneficial. Having said that even though it was an intensive few day course they hardly scratched the surface of the knowledge needed.
But, in terms of having meaningful conversations with me, and understanding the stages involved he has come on in leaps and bounds. At least now he could spot a rogue SEO companies technique.
I suppose the "expensive" outsourced solutions appear that way because often your not comparing like with like.
Using an outsourced solutions, you don't have that learning curve, you don't have to pay for the "trainee" mistakes (because there shouldn't be any), you can use the trainee in the resource that they might be better skilled to become.
I am sure that between the people on here there is all the "resource" to put together a "somehow" training course, but I am not convinced that many companies would pay for it. Often a CPC campaign doesn't look too bad until someone else has a go at it and does it right.
As for would it have been better to get there in a month, it depends how much money you cost, how much lost revenue your learning curve cost your company, how much market share you lost. The fact you are full time is a rarity, the typical scenario is someone does it half and half to start with and in time it becomes an easy to discard marketing fad.
If you have 6 months of knowledge in multi-disciplines then it will be paying dividends for your company now..... when you starting up your own company? hehe (it's the next logical step for you)
Much of what we do at my company as far as internet marketing happened mostly because I have an "adventurous" attitude towards my job. I was hired to just over see the internet marketing. Most of what I do now was either done with an outside firm or just in house when someone had time. The SEO company we had was really taking advantage of us. It took me learning what SEO is and what is right and what is spamming to realize this. I pulled them and decided to do it myself and it worked.
Now my company has me training an admin to do what I do. And (I hate to break it to all of you) but she is doing it very well at half the price. In the past 6 months I have taught her HTML, basic SEO and basic email marketing. We will be moving into CPC in the next month or so. And as she progesses, she is learning how to educate herself.
I know that she is my replacement. I am going to help them launch another site in a few months so I don't mind. I get bored easily anyway. She has no degree and here in the midwest, there isn't many places she can go for a job in the ecommerce field nor would she want to leave this city. She probably won't ever make more than admin pay. My company is getting a bargain for her.
It got me to thinking if other companies could do the same. Is this the wave of the future? Most of them don't now because they think it is too complicated but people once had that opinion of computers in general. For the record, I don't think I would want to train people. Too much travel for too long. But I really do wonder if there is a market for it.
Pre-training required: Internet Fundamentals
The Baker's Dozen...
1. Basic HTML
2. Basic CSS
3. Writing Valid Code
4. Advanced HTML
5. Advanced CSS
6. Website Organization - Directory Structure
7. Web Copywriting
8. Basic SEO
9. Advanced SEO
10. Basic SEM
11. Advanced SEM
12. PPC Management
13. CPC Management
And the list goes on, I think I've covered the main parts. There would be quite a few sub categories within the main ones. To truly be effective and offer a well rounded service requires that you do items 1 thru 11 before PPC and CPC.
Don't get me wrong, you can take the shortcuts and jump right into PPC and CPC. But, without knowing the basics first, you'll stumble along the way. Depending on your industry, it could be costly.
Sewage Enforcement Officer
This is the generation that is coming up. We already see kids running sites successfully. When it comes down to it, it is not that tough. Time consuming, yes. Need a flair for it to do it, yes. Hard, not really. Just look at this whole site.
Journalists, doctors, engineers, college kids, people who didn't feel the need to get out of bed to go to work one morning. Many, many, many of them learned it all on their own. How long before big business learns the same. They already send people to classes on how to be confident or professional or a boss or about a billion other things. How long before they send people to internet marketing classes? Maybe they are already looking for them.
Hard, not really. Just look at this whole site.
Looks can be deceiving! ;)
If you were going to use a comparison for what may be classified as easy, I don't think WebmasterWorld qualifies.
I know what you mean about kids. My almost 3 year old daughter already knows how to mouse her way around her website. I'll be training her in the years to come! My little SEOette. ;)
