The art of the deal, and bartering, re: guns

[Monkeyleg]

If I posted this question over on THR, I'd get so many looney opinions that I wouldn't know where to begin to sort them out.

Short story (or as short as I can make it): back in 2, a friend of mine and his partner bought an existing gun store. I offered to create a website for them, initially as a favor.

This was a win-win for them and for me, as they got a service for free, and I used their site to learn search engine optimization techniques without any sort of backlash if what I had learned didn't work.

Within a year or so, what I'd learned had firmly established their site in the top five positions on Google for terms such as "Ed Brown pistols," "Kimber pistols," "Bushmaster rifles," or whatever other terms they wanted.

In the meantime, I continued to learn more about SEO. It cost none of us anything.

Then came the requests for me to do more: create more pages, get them ranked for other brands and search terms, etc.

It was then that I said it was time for them to compensate me for my time. My friend asked what I wanted for the 300+ hours I'd put in, and I said a new Kimber Eclipse Target. I had it within a few months.

My friend was pushed out of the partnership, but another friend remained as the sole owner. And he had requests: get his site ranked for the collectible knives the shop carries, and so on.

It didn't take anywhere near as much time to put new pages on the site, and get him ranked for the knives he wanted. So, I merely asked for a Century Arms G3 as payment.

Since then, the store has been building up a really impressive inventory of used guns, especially police trade-ins.

And, so, the other day my friend called to ask if I would get him ranked in the top five search engine positions for terms like "Wisconsin used guns," or "used guns Wisconsin." He also asked that I get his site ranked at the top for "Wisconsin shooting ranges," or "Wisconsin indoor shooting ranges."

For anyone who knows anything about search engine rankings, that's like asking to arrange an invitation to the Bush Ranch. IOW, it isn't that simple. I could spend a day re-working the site, and just see what happens. Or I could re-work the site, and then spend literally dozens of hours to get the site into the top five Google results for those terms.

When it comes to business, money and negotiations, I can and have screwed up a free lunch.

So, here's my thoughts.

Offer my friend a range of options, from simply adding new pages to his site. For this, I would ask for a Henry Big Boy .44 mag as compensation. (I've always wanted a nice lever-action, and the .44 mag would cover handgun calibers as well).

On the high end, if he wants me to put in the requisite time to get his site in the top five positions on Google, I'd suggest either a Springfield M1A or a good quality M4-forgery fully decked out with picatinny rails, an ACOG sight, vertical foregrip, and all the other goodies.

I know I'm asking some stupid questions. But my friend made a stupid request the other day when he asked that I get him ranked in the top positions for the terms he wanted. Apparently, he thinks it's like calling the phone company and asking to have his Yellow Pages listing changed.

Anyway, any suggestions you may have regarding my upcoming negotiations are much appreciated.

[Northwoods]

Personally I think you're selling yourself short in dollar equivalents.  Think about what true web pros charge for that kind of service, and the man hours it would take you to it.  I'd be willing to bet it would take you (a lot?) more than 10 hours to set up the website for the top end of what he wants.  Those guns you mentioned, IIRC, are in the neighborhood of $1000.  For that kind of work I'd think anyone else would charge him more than $100/hr.

But, what do I know.  I'm not a web designer, nor a battle rifle aficionado. 

[MattC]

Hey Dick.  Good work: #3 for Kimber Pistols!  That is seriously impressive.

I do not know how much communication has occured between you and your friend about the technical methods for arranging these search results, however it may be time to sit down with him and formally explain some of the difficulties.  I also suggest bringing in actual numbers on the fees that web developers charge for services like this.  From there, ask him for a compromise.  He provides you dealer pricing, and you work at a discounted rate.  Continuing to barter for guns will eventually lead to a difference in perceived value of the work you are doing, and cause hard feelings, if it's not already begining to happen.

Advice is worth what you pay for it, minus a bit when it comes over the Internet.  Hope it provides some thoughts for you to explore, though.

Best,
Matt

[HankB]

Not knowing either you or your friend personally, I'll just repeat an old cliche:

Friends are friends. Business is business.

(IMNSHO, MattC makes some very good points.)

[BryanP]

Why not just establish a reasonable $ per hour rate for your time with the understanding that it would be paid out in guns?

If it takes long enough to pay for the M4, great.

[charby]

I charge $60-100 a hour for website work, if you need a baseline. You seem to do a lot more to a website than I do so you may want to charge more.

-C

[cordex]

Crap.  Charby, do you do custom web application development or just layout and visuals?  I've spent the past few months doing contract stuff with a company that I'm not charging nearly enough.  They're not a gun store, but I know the President and CEO and either might be persuaded to pay in firearms.

[charby]

Mostly Layout and visuals, very little apps because most people I have worked with just wanted a info pages.

I charge those prices because I have to use my own computer and software, so you have to look at that business expense. I actually haven't done a website for hire in a while because of time constraints with work, school and being married less than a year, but I am ready to wow a potetial client in the next couple weeks. (I want a RRA AR and i need $$ to purchase it.)

I do a ton of web crap at work but I am paid a salary for it.

This is an example of a bid that I submitted last year for a very basic website where all the data they wanted posted was in a word doc

Qty   Description                                                                  Price   
1   10 Page Website with 30 Days unlimited corrections/changes   300       
1   Photos and Graphics editing                                                      100   
1   5 hours of Editing for 11 months after 1st 30 days                200   
         
   Additional hours will be $65 per hour.       



-C

[Art Eatman]

I'm with MattC:  Educate your friend as to how much work is entailed in the effort, so he knows it's more than just a couple of evenings at home, playing on the computer.

Art

[Monkeyleg]

Charby, a good SEO specialist will charge $100 to $150 an hour. I consider myself to me a mid-range SEO specialist, although I've been very successful at getting sites on the first page of Google.

The point about educating my friend is well-taken. I don't think he realizes just how much work is involved. For my own Gunshopfinder.com site, it took me nine months of working every single day on the site before I finally got into the top five results. Even after all that work, I still can't get my site ranked better than my friend's site for terms like "Kimber pistols" or others. I guess I did too good a job for him.

I realize he's getting a bargain. My intent here is to do some side work, and get a new gun. With all of the financial demands our house is putting on our budget, there's no gun fund.

[cordex]

charby,

I'm in a similar position when it comes to time.

For my latest client I bid my time as a straight $40 per hour.  Most of what I'm doing is either tweaking their existing sites or doing custom application development and the design work for those applications.  The nice thing is that it is a larger, reliable contract through a third-party who handles all the customer service and just forwards work requests.  I'm looking at a few months of relatively solid work at least.

Monkeyleg,
I do very little - if any - SEO work.  I was under the impression that Google tries to do a gestalt thing where it grades sites based on how many other sites link to it given a certain term (weighted to some extent by the grade of the other sites).  Does that play into your optimization?  I'm not trying to leech your hard-earned knowledge, just curious.

[Gewehr98]

Screw guns.

Cold, hard cash.

[Monkeyleg]

Cordex, link popularity is just one factor. Actually there's a whole slew of factors: links, page title, keyword density, meta description tags (some would argue those; I swear by them), navigation structure, site seniority, page rank, page weight, and more.

I could just go in and make changes to a couple of existing pages, but I'm a firm believer in one page for each desired keyword or phrase. If my friend wants first-page results for "used guns Wisconsin" or "indoor shooting ranges Wisconsin," then I'm going to insist that he have me create new pages for those terms.

Also, his traffic has been slowly declining the last year, as he hasn't had me make any changes, and I suspect people have seen the site as stagnant. So, if he wants more traffic, well, we need to add more pages.

Right now Google is going through one of its dreaded updates. I've lost a couple of positions on the first page for a couple of terms. But I'm #1 for "HK pistols," "Springfield Armory pistols," "Springfield Armory rifles," and other terms. The manufacturers' sites don't even show up. 

[Laurent du Var]

Maybe it would be better just to make a written offer.
In French it we call it un devis, I'm missing the English word but it
says basically here is what I'm going to do for you and here is what you're
going to pay, be it guns or money give or take ten percent.

Just a quick question :
How is SEO not becoming obsolete with search engines like Alta Vista selling the top
spots to paying "sponsors" charging for every click they get onto their website ?

[Vodka7]

Just a quick question :
How is SEO not becoming obsolete with search engines like Alta Vista selling the top
spots to paying "sponsors" charging for every click they get onto their website ?

No one uses Alta Vista.  If you're not Google, and to a lesser extent Yahoo or MSN, no one cares.

In addition to that, a lot of users (i.e., me) don't trust those paid results.  They're like banner ads for me--my eyes skip right over them, and my brain doesn't even register their presence.

[AJ Dual]

If this is the shop I'm thinking it is, considering what they want for transfers these days, good luck...

The risk with "educating" a "friend" as to how much your services are really worth is the only sure way to do it is get them a bid from another professional in the field.

Then, when they see how much a "real" pro charges, you run the risk of them just paying that guy the cash because he's the "professional", and not just their "amateur" friend...

[Monkeyleg]

Vodka7, various studies have shown that search engine users are 4 to 7 times more likely to click on an organic (unpaid) result than on a paid ad like the Google Adwords ads.

I don't pay attention to Alta Vista, Excite, or any of the third or fourth-tier search engines. 90% of my focus is on Google, and the rest goes to MSN and Yahoo. My experience has been that, if you can make it on Google, you're going to get good rankings on most other search engines as well. I think many of them feed off Google now.

There's no hostility between the owner of this shop and me. I'd be more than happy to invite him to get a quote from a known, local SEO outfit for what he wants. In fact, I'm sure he would then appreciate what he's gotten from me for the last 5+ years.

All of the replies on this thread have gotten me to think about something else. I currently do freelance SEO work for an internet company in Michigan. The owner really wants to expand the SEO end of the business, and wants me to run that end.

Rather than chase sites that sell children's videos, metal treatments, real estate, and all sorts of other disparate subjects, I wonder if it might be more efficient to focus on gun and sporting goods related sites.

Impact Guns beats me out for a few search phrases but, more often than not, I beat them. Likewise with the other sites that are trying to become major online players in the gun/gun accessories niche.

AJ, I will bet you a case of .223 that the owner of the shop (you're right about which shop it is) would never pay a "pro" to do what I'm doing. He knows he's getting a bargain.

Besides, if he hired some slick "pro" outfit (who ever said I wasn't a "pro?"), I could sit back and watch his rankings sink. Meanwhile, I'd move up in the  rankings for my own site.

That's what happened to one of the clients I was doing work for on behalf of the Michigan company. When we got the account last year, the company wasn't ranking for any of the terms the owner wanted. Within two months, I increased their traffic by 35%. By January of this year, I had their site in the top ten positions for dozens and dozens of search terms.

Well, some slick outfit came along and sold the owner on the idea that they could do better.

The site's traffic is now starting to drop. I can't wait until it hits rock bottom. (Evil smirk).

[MattC]

Dick, be careful about specializing.  Being an entrepreneur makes you rather vulnerable to market shifts.  I suggest keeping at least one major client in a different type of market than what you decide focus on.

Damn, I feel like a kid telling dad how to drive when I offer you advice.

[Monkeyleg]

Matt, your advice is well-taken.

Specialization works until your specialized market disappears. It happens. It happened to me in the late 1990's and early 2001 era.

However, there's a certain panache to being the perceived "best of the best."

Give the marketing people at Kimber a call, and ask who does their websites and print advertising. I forget the guy's name, but he's spent his entire career and lifetime cultivating accounts like Kimber, RCBS and others.

And he's built himself no small empire.

I was very naive when I started up Gunshopfinder.com. I thought that I could just give gun store owners a username and password, and they would just go off and write their own advertisements on my site.

Never happened. The store owners work very long days, and the last thing on their minds is writing advertising. That's why 99.9% of the stores on my site have descriptions that I've written. I give them the base, and then they can go on and change it from there.

There is a risk in specializing. But there's also a benefit. As I mentioned, my site is beating Impact Guns for a whole host of terms. And I'm beating other sites that are trying to enter the online gun market.

I have no idea what Impact or the other online gun sites are spending on SEO, but they must be spending no small amount. Perhaps the guy who's doing the SEO stuff is also handling the online store, the shipments, and God knows what else.

SEO and the physical functions of an online store, though, separate. That's what the owner of the company I mentioned in an earlier post (the one who cancelled her contract) didn't understand: what I do is largely invisible. My work doesn't show up as a new graphic on the site.

Where my work shows itself is in the traffic numbers. And I'm really proud of the amount of traffic I've increased.

I'll go visit my friend this weekend, and offer him the full spectrum of packages I described above. He's no dummy, so I suspect he'll agree to the very least of my conditions.

The idea of focusing on gun-related sites, though, is becoming more appealing.