Not All Student Entrepreneurs Drop Out

Today’s generation of students has a high exposure to the Internet, smartphones, social and many other technologies from a very young age. It is not uncommon to see college students tinkering with technology, starting digital startups, and making millions (and occasionally even billions). Some drop out of school to build their business, but not all.

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 7)

Sramana: What role do inbound links to a site really play? There seems to be ambiguity and controversy around link-building techniques. Mike Mothner: You can have 10 experts in a room and get 10 different answers, hopefully with some overlap. Fundamentally, the best links are those which are not negotiated or traded for.

Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 6)

Sramana: In general, what metrics do you track and optimize against? Mike Mothner: We always want to have a metric to use to track effectiveness. That metric will vary from client to client. We can track when somebody purchases a product, when somebody fills out a lead form, phone calls by using different numbers for

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 5)

Sramana: When you do get a list that includes all of the long tail keywords, how do you prioritize that list? How do you manage lists that have tens of thousands of keywords? Mike Mothner: We group keywords semantically. We will focus on the major keywords individually which are determined by search volume. We will

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 4)

Sramana: As you were going through this process, you likely found there was a multivariate optimization algorithm that could apply. How do you feed that algorithm? How do you decide which keywords should even be considered in the beginning? Mike Mothner: That stage of the process involves creating a net of keywords. We call that

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 3)

Sramana: How much did you charge your first client? Mike Mothner: Our fee back then was $250 a month to manage her budget. Her budget was $1,000 a month.

Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 2)

Sramana: So you graduated from Dartmouth, turned down Goldman Sachs, and decided to focus on Wpromote. What was your next move? Mike Mothner: It was June of 2003, and I moved back to L.A. I had a good idea what I wanted to do to expand Wpromote. I was using PPC to drive an organic

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 1)

Michael Mothner is the founder and CEO of search engine marketing firm Wpromote. The company has maintained over 2,700% growth from 2003 through 2007. Michael has a degree in economics and computer science from Dartmouth College. Sramana: Mike, what is your story leading up to Wpromote? Where are you from? Mike Mothner: I am 29

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