Will Spencer is one of the many web publishers who has been around for many years, learned his craft and until recently has been low key. His forum Netbuilders.org was voted as the most helpful webmaster/ web marketing forum by the readers of SearchFeature.com.

Net Builders at its young age already enjoys nice success and many have started seeing results in their internet business from advice they have taken from a community filled with successful web publishers earning $50,000.00 and above monthly and freely contributing knowledge for those who take the time to take the steps to improve their earnings.

Search Feature: Will, Google adsense has been a catalyst for countless discussions and arguments on forums everywhere and I would like to get from you your point of few as to how you believe their performance has increased, decreased, shifted or changed for better or worse in the past few years and what do you believe adsense could do right now to help them become more efficient for advertisers and publishers alike?

Will Spencer: AdSense payouts to publishers have been steadily decreasing for several years.  It is widely believed that this is because Google is constantly lowering the percentage of AdWords revenue it shares with publishers. One of the best things Google could do would be to introduce transparency into it’s accounting systems to allow publishers to find out what they are being paid.

Google could also improve their publisher relations by providing telephone and email support to AdSense partners.  Google is relentlessly focusing on automated support mechanisms that are unfortunately terrible.  They provide very little value to AdSense publishers and Google is providing no effective alternative to their automated systems.

SF: Everyone seems to want quick cash, but few have the patience to actually do their homework and then work towards reasonable goal. Let’s say I am a newbie and come on your forum asking, “Hey Will, I want to make as much money as you, what should I do?”

WS: I’d recommend you find a niche that you are really interested in and build a site so good that YOU would want to visit it. Building great sites saves you a lot of money which you would otherwise spend on marketing.

Of course, in reality you will not say what you really think in response to such a question, at least not on your own forum, but please be frank with us and let us know exactly how you would respond were you forced to be brutally honest without the fear of hurting someone else’s feelings.

I’m a straight forward guy.  I’ve never been good at sparing people’s feeling.  I think that, overall, most people need to toughen up a bit. In kindergarten I was taught “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  It believe that most people would benefit from learning that lesson.

SF: Net Builders seems to be doing great, and I would like to know from you what is your long term vision and what are you trying to build that has not yet been delivered in this industry of ours?

WS: My goal with NetBuilders is to create an environment which pushes people to succeed.  A lot of other webmaster communities seem to revel in gossip and chatter.  I believe that while a reasonable amount of socialization is healthy, a lot of webmasters should be paying more attention to their building their web sites than to inflating their forum post counts.

NetBuilders is focused on maintaining a higher quality of posts, because I really want it to be a learning environment.  I want every hour a person spends at NetBuilders to be a worthwhile investment of their time.

SF: Even though you yourself have great knowledge of SEO, you are not providing services for others. Can you please give us some insight as to what you would be looking for if you yourself considered hiring an SEO company after years of seeing the good, the bad, the ugly and the scammers?

WS: As a fairly knowledgeable SEO, I tend to buy from vendors who provide a la carte service offerings at competitive prices. Customers who are not in the SEO industry are often more interested in package deals which are prepared for them.

I want to know what I’m getting, in detail.  Vendors still occasionally try to snow me with vague claims about their services and after one or two message exchanges I just ignore them.  Life is too short to deal with people who won’t talk straight.

SF: Will, let’s say I am making $50,000.00 a year and I need it to keep up with my bills. I make $1,200.00 a month working 10 hours a week online in addition and want to do nothing more than break free from my job and devote all of my time to start my own Internet business but am frightened to take the step. Having seen you make that leap at one
point, give us a few reasonable steps for someone to goals and when would you jump into it 100 percent?

WS: I have always been a huge proponent of starting a business while keeping your day job.  For most people, it’s a great compromise between security and growth.

I’d say that if you’re only working 10 hours a week on your business, you’re a slacker and you don’t deserve to succeed.  :p

The point to make the jump to full-time is different for everyone, because it really depends upon your needs for cashflow.  If you have lower expenses, you can be more aggressive.  If you have a mortgage and kids, you’re going to have to be a lot more cautious.

Keep working at it though — you can succeed if you WANT to succeed.

SF: What makes Net Builders a forum that people are interested in spending time on is the fact that members discuss what works and what doesn’t rather than getting too deep into search engine related discussions. To think outside of the box for a little bit, where do you see the best traffic coming from.

WS: The best traffic is traffic that converts.  That’s different for every niche.  For me, referral traffic converts the best and search engine traffic is a close #2.  Social media traffic converts very poorly in my niches.  PPC traffic is just too expensive to consider in most of the niches I operate in.

SF: I know quite a few people who have managed to land deals through Twitter, Facebook and other networks. Are you exploring those avenues, do you recommend that webmasters spend time doing so and where do you see new opportunities rising and old opportunities dying in the next 5 years?

WS: Social networks are great for people in professional service industries like SEO.  I am not selling services, so I don’t invest a lot of time in those networks.  Of those networks, the one I use most in LinkedIn.  I think they provide a lot more value in less time than Twitter or Facebook.

SF: Aside from Net Builders, name a few resources worth taking advantage of. Where do you go when you want information? What networks do you recommend paying attention to and name a couple of mistakes to avoid which you have witnessed people wasting their time on.

WS: I am a huge fan of Aaron Wall’s SEOBook Community.  I’ve learned a lot from Aaron, and I would have learned a lot more if I had joined earlier.

I believe that the biggest mistake people make is not trying enough new strategies and tactics.  The second biggest mistake is not sticking with each one long enough to determine if it will work.  Webmasters, as a group, tend to spend too much time getting caught up in “paralysis by analysis” and not enough time actually building stuff.  The best way to
determine if something will work is to try it.  That’s what I would like to encourage everyone to do.

SF: Thank you for the interview, Will, and I’ll see you around!