In the past years, I’ve consumed insane amounts of content on SEO, marketing and even business management, because I believe in always learning and never being self-complacent. I’m also a geek, so studying was always a big passion.
As one would expect, a lot of the advice you find online is from good to great (if you know whom to follow), but there’s also a flood of feely-goody stuff created just because the YouTuber HAS to post daily, if possible. And one cannot be a genius on a daily basis, even if with a large team of producers and content-monkeys.
A skill I’m trying to learn is to take everything with a grain of salt (that’s my husband’s influence, he’s the one who can always look a little more than skindeep). And, as soon as I’ve developed this skill, I realized that not everything we see is real, that a lot of these influencers either post crap or have no idea what they’re talking about and, mainly, how to still find nuggets in all this noise.
One of the YouTubers I like to watch every once in a while is Codi Sanchez. While she’s gone down the “let’s post a lot of stuff” slope in the past year, some of the older videos are worth watching, even if just to change your mindset as a business owner.
While I was enjoying some of these productions I had at least 2 times when I realized the content was skewed towards HER financial gain and not really what I’d need to get from it (hence the title here).
Premium domain names promoted for GoDaddy
I have no beef with someone earning a buck, one of the reasons I stopped blogging a few years ago was that it didn’t bring me any decent income and just wasting time to produce content for thank yous doesn’t really pay the bills.
Her “deal” with GoDaddy doesn’t faze me at all, but BAD advice does.
In one of her videos Codi was promoting the idea of purchasing PREMIUM domains. Now, if you’ve been around the Sun for at least 2-3 decades, you know that premium domains can cost an arm and a leg, plus a working kidney. As an SEO and web developer, I’ve seldom bought such beasts (paid a few hundred bucks for webdesignnj.com, cause it’s the company’s main domain).
Why is she promoting premium domains? Math is easy: a “simple” domain name costs 20 bucks or similar, so her affiliate commission is pennies. A premium domain name can cost thousands; you guessed how the commission looks like.
Is this useful for a small business?
NO!
Sure if you have a huge brand and your main domain was taken (now, ideally don’t start a company with a certain name, if you cannot secure your .com). But just to pay thousands of bucks for a domain with (most likely) no history or at least some decent backlinks?
How should you do it?
If you do like to get a domain with some authority, head to expireddomains.net or some of the big vendors and buy whatever you can afford. I got some pretty sweet deals from there, yokohama150.org comes to mind (cost me 48 bucks with a very nice initial DR for me).
I could give her the benefit of the doubt (the woman is not an SEO), but the next “trip” down “let’s fool the idiots” irked me a lot.
Renting is better, because I have rental units
Before you start to explain to me how renting/ownership works, we have done both in the US. Rented and after 2 years bought a house. Why? Because my mortgage payment is $1,920/mo at the moment (including property taxes which are almost 1 grand), while a similar unit to our house (3 bedroom, 2 baths) is over $3,500/mo.
Not to mention that, in 15 years from now on, my kid will have her own house PAID OFF, not the pleasure of having paid someone’s house for decades.
So …
While math has always worked better for owners than renters, that’s why we bother with mortgage payments, guess what our YouTuber promotes?
Yeah, how wonderful it is to rent.
I commented that one would assume all these millionaires (herself included) are also renting, if it’s that cool and never got a response.
Why the focus to promote the amazing pros of renting? Because said person has rental units which need to be filled.
Should you stop following advice altogether?
Heck now. But open your eyes, understand what THEY have to gain from it and, if it still makes sense and is OK, then learn. If not, switch to someone else.
Your turn here, whom do you listen to? Ever caught them skewing information?
