Along those same lines, I’m pretty much running this particular site without much of a strategy starting out. I realized that it’s to my advantage to have this here, for making some non-reciprocal link exchanges, and that I should also have a proper flagship site.

But even with that, there is some strategy involved. The specifics will clear up over time, as I see where things go, and what sort of form they start to take.

It’s easy to have a goal, but much more difficult sometimes to know how to get there, but if you take action, you can start to see the how much more clearly over time.

No real point. Just an interesting observation.

Congratulations on your success, and I hope you continue to have great success. I’ll do what I can to help out in that respect.

However, I think it is much like what you said about on site SEO. Changing the title tags has a big ROI. The more you fiddle with on site seo, the lower ROI you get. Then once you are rewriting posts, you have crossed into where your time would be better spent on linkbuilding efforts.

I see “free” the same way. It has a diminishing return, eventually reaching a tipping point where it becomes detrimental instead of beneficial.

I think the major value in “free” is that it allows you to grab mind share in a competitive market. My niche is defined by SEO Book and SEOMoz, who switched to a pay model as well. The major benefit I’ve received from giving free advice is accelerated growth, but it came at a cost (lack of profit).

It is kind of a juggle, because if I came out with a pay model the day I launched, I think my site would have stagnated and died. People would have said “who’s this fool”. I’d have a hard time comparing my product to Rand’s and Aaron’s. Launching a paid service these days would have a chance of being successful though.

Originally though, SEOZombie was just a little side project with no purpose or expectations of profit. It wasn’t until recently that I started thinking of it from that perspective.