No doubt Google is bad ass, but within their search results and in other parts of the web much much marketing or manipulation occurs.

One person I know runs banner ads through an ad server. The told me about what they were making (which was pretty good) but were unimpressed with the lack of ability to grow that sharply.

Most the ads they were selling were CPM ads. The ads were exceptionally unrelated to their site. I was the first person to really explain to them how current off topic ads give future advertisers the idea that there must be little value there since the ads are so random.

The best testimonial a past advertiser can give is to STILL BE ADVERTISING.

Relevant ads give the perception of value. Irrelivant ads do not.

Another person runs a huge ad website who does a ton of relevant advertising, but they were looking to expand and were maxing out many of their markets. I showed them a simple technological thing they could be doing to double their ad supply in a month.

I started helping a few more people do SEO and found out one of the people who bought my ebook and new nothing about computers 6 months ago is now ranking well for lots of gold related searches.

It becomes easy to lose appreciation for a bunch of things when you are doing well. It seems that lots of the pain others around me live through stays with me a bit. And it seems I still am a bit to robotic in my actions.

That magical purpose of life still evades me. I am really good at selling other people's stuff, just not too good at selling my own. But I guess if you help enough other people you gain karma and they help you.

Amazing how well these networks let you connect to people and yet how distant from society I am. Beyond marketing life I actually need to start living it, but that is another chapter.