I've learned quite a bit on Aaron's SEOBook forums about SEO. (Disclosure: after spending entirely too much time there apparently saying useful stuff he made me a moderator, but I'm not compensated for recommending it to you.)<p>Ironically, I've learned <i>more</i> about generic marketing topics. Probably the most consequential single piece of advice was Aaron rewriting two lines of copy on my purchasing page to emphasize what people were getting as opposed to what I was selling.<p>I've harped on "benefits not features" for <i>years</i>, but what was I talking about next to the freaking buy button? The fact that they'd be "purchasing a single copy", which tells the customer absolutely nothing of value (99.9% of my customers purchase a single copy, literally). Aaron swapped in "Buy now and get instant access via download" (this is something to highlight to customers who are often busy preparing a lesson for <i>tomorrow</i>). My conversion rate went up by about 10%, and two years later that single tweak has been worth thousands.<p>The copy tweak is what always sticks out in my mind, but I've gotten some very valuable SEO advice, too. My mini-site strategy, for example, was heavily informed by advice from Aaron and the guys, and it has worked out very well for me.<p>I wish startups were more appreciative about SEO as a channel. I think many, many of the folks here could use it to great effect.
><i>"There's a bit of free-tard culture stuff... The truth is that if you let those people influence your decision making too much then all you're doing is sacrificing your own quality of life to like uh, appease a bunch of abusive, worthless sacks of crap that don't care about you, so yes you'll always get blow-back when you try to charge for something, but you can't like, you can't internalize it too much because it's mostly like a reflection of those people's internal lack of self-esteem and internal lack of value that..."</i><p>Those must have been some terrible emails! It's kind of surprising that the had that problem since only the new customer's rates went up (and existing customers kept their old rates). Then again with enough traffic... I suppose you'll be visited by all types.