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What do Google’s ever changing algorithms and Seth Godin’s new book, The Dip have to do with each other?

I was surfing ABestWeb.com a few days ago. You see, like most people, I’m having my problems with Google. They keep raising the cost of my keywords for my PPC campaign for my quitting smoking book, The Harold Cole Method. I thought at ABestWeb, I might get some insight into the problem.

God, I hate forums!

They can be good places to find answers to very specific questions about the kinds of things we do, but you have to wade through all the bitching and sniping to get there.

Is it that forums attract people who are generally hormonal or do they become that way after a few weeks of lurking and commenting?

I didn’t learn exactly what I came to find out. I think my keywords are fine and compared with everyone else’s are fairly priced. I did learn that some webmasters (and mistresses, too!) got caught in Google’s crackdown on useless AdSense sites.

It seems the way Google kicks you out of the playing field is to raise your keyword minimum bids to astronomical levels, making it effectively impossible for you to make any money with your campaign.

This is affectionately called being “Google slapped.”

Oh well, yet another potential hurdle on my way to living the life of a full-time internet entrepreneur!

I don’t believe I’ve been Google slapped. Google spanked, maybe.

Of course, the problem is that with 80% of the searches, Google is a near monopoly. We’ll get into the ramifications of that in a future post.

What’s interesting to me is the ever changing terrain of webmastering for profit.

Which brings me to Seth Godin’s new book, The Dip.

Seth is really good at creating simple paradigms for complex situations.

The situation he’s attempting to tame in this book is something anyone who’s every done anything, or tried to do anything, has experienced.

If you’re older than six, I suspect the following has happened to you many times.

When you set out to master something new, a new sport, a new language, a new business, for instance, at first things go well.

In the beginning of any new thing, you’re always stoked! Any progress is welcome because it’s new.

You feel like you’re mastering this new thing quickly, like you will get to the point of mastery fast!

Then it’s like the title of that book, “Who Moved My Cheese.”

What seemed to be not so hard suddenly becomes discouragingly difficult. And it stays that way, oftentimes to the point of your quitting altogether!

Now, if the thing you want to master is important enough to you, you’ll stay with it and finally surface on the other side. You’ll finally see some improvement. If you continue long enough, you’ll even master whatever it is you’re attempting to learn.

That’s the dip!

When you start something, it’s momentarily easy, then it becomes much harder to the point of quitting! If you stay with it, it begins to get easier again, but not until you’ve paid a fairly steep price.

I’m currently in the dip concerning my ebook.

At first I sold a few and I was really excited! Then nothing! And then, more of nothing.

The dip makes you do things like question your strategy, or especially it makes you question if you should be attempting what you’re doing at all.

A lot of people start things never to come out of the dip to the other side.

Of non-trivial activities, I can think of two times in my life when I was beaten by the dip. I didn’t realize I was in a dip, I just thought things weren’t working out. (I used to blame myself at these times, bad habit!)

If what you’re trying to do is important to you, you should stay in the dip until you get to the other side!

Why do we have dips? I don’t know. My guess is it has something to do with the basic workings of our brains, maybe the reticular activating system. It could just be statistical in nature.

Take my ebook for instance. Let’s say I will sell 1 book for 42 clicks, on average. Well, if I’ve sold three books and only had 60 clicks, it’s understandable that I might experience a drought of sales for a while, while the sales to click ratio evens out.

Maybe that’s the dip!

The important thing about the dip is this: don’t let it beat you! (Usually!)

If you’re attempting something important to your life, make it through the dip, if at all possible.

Think of all the people you know who would love to make enough money online to quit their jobs.

How many people do this?

Damn few!

I remember reading in one of John Chow’s posts where he says people tell him all the time they would love to be like him, able to make money on the internet. John always says “you can, just build a site”! Only two of all of the people John has ever said this to have built a site. One of them (I believe) makes a full time living through his site.

I guess the others were beaten by the dip–more likely, they never even started.

Google slapping!

I remember in one of Terry Brooks‘ books, there was a huge monster in the middle of a forest. The heroes had to cross the forest, hopefully without being eaten by the monster. I’ve forgotten its name. Maybe it should have been named “Google.”

How you get through the dip is important, and not something Seth addresses. This is where Wallace Wattles and The Science of Getting Rich comes in.

There are harder and easier ways of moving through the dip. I’ll discuss all of this next time.

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Also, if you smoke, now's the time to quit! Buy my book, How To Quit Smoking: The Harold Cole Method! It's 100% guaranteed!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 8:17 am and is filed under Self-help, eBooks, Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.