IN MY OPINION, Traffic Power Sucks!

When I first noticed that Traffic Power was not providing the services that had been promised to me, I went online and tried to find some information on them. One of the first sites I came across was www.seobook.com. When I created this site, I posted a link to www.seobook.com on my "proof" page. Several months later, I received an email from Aaron Wall, the owner of SEO Book. He said that he had found my site in his logs, from people who had clicked on the link I had put up.

Aaron gave me some advice for my site, and offered to link to my site from his site. If I remember correctly, he put a link to my site on his "Cool Sites" page. About 3 months later, I heard from Aaron again. He mentioned that he had written a book about SEO, and asked if I would mention it on my site. I told him that I was not recommending any SEO's on my site. My reasoning at that time was that I had received several emails from people who claimed they had contacted Traffic Power and asked them about my site, and Traffic Power had told them that I was a competitor. I figured that if I started recommending any SEO, then people might think that I was working for that SEO and that this site was just here to trick people. So, I didn't mention Aaron's book, and didn't think any more about it.

Just about a year later, I received a Cease and Desist letter from Traffic Power, which I wrote about on my News page. Not long after, I was served papers saying that Traffic Power was suing me. When I wrote about the lawsuit on my News page, Aaron emailed me to say that he had been served something similar. He asked if maybe we should work together on a "defensive & offensive strategy". Boy am I glad I said yes...

At the time that the lawsuit was served, my online business was not doing very well. It had started out very well, but being banned from Google dropped our sales from about 40 or 50 a day to about 10 a day. Add to that some problems with Overture's pay per click advertising, and my company was suddenly in debt. When I finally found a lawyer to help me out with the lawsuit, the first thing he wanted was a $1500.00 retainer just to take the case on. I didn't have the money, but Aaron said, "Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it". After a short time, Aaron decided to use a different law firm to handle his case, but he never asked for his $1500.00 back. As the case dragged on, the bills started to mount up. I had put a PayPal donation button on my site, and I did receive some donations, but not enough to keep on fighting. Once again, Aaron said he would take care of it. As the legal bills came in, I would send him the bill, and he would send out a check.

Aaron was not just paying for my lawsuit, at the same time he was fighting his own battle. If I understand it correctly, Traffic Power finally just stopped filing the paperwork they were supposed to file for his lawsuit, and it was over. The same thing almost happened with my lawsuit, but the court system got bogged down and one of the filing dates was moved up a week, and Traffic Power's lawyer managed to get my paperwork filed on time. More bills. I finally told Aaron that I was ready to give up, it was going on almost a year of fighting, with no end in sight, but Aaron told me to just keep sending him the bills, and he'd take care of them.

During all of this, Aaron sent me a copy of his book, SEOBook. I read his book from cover to cover, and found a lot of very good information. Thinking back to the very first time I had heard from Aaron, I could see that he was practicing what he preached. His book talks about checking your log files, and that's exactly how Aaron found my site in the first place. He talks about getting your site listed on other websites, and that's exactly what he was trying to do the second time I heard from him. There was a lot of very good information in the book, but the best thing about it is that is was not finished, Aaron is continually adding to it, I started getting emails from Aaron saying that I could go out and download a new copy. Aaron also posted SEO information constantly to his website. And, he gave me an open invitation to email him any time I had a question about something I was going to do to promote my site. I don't know of any other SEO professional who does this. If you are looking for a guide to getting your site listed higher on the search engines, I absolutely recommend Aaron Wall's SEOBook.

Traffic Power eventually gave me an offer, they would drop the lawsuit and I could keep this site up. I still wanted to fight it, but my lawyer informed me that even if I won, there wasn't much of a chance that the court would make Traffic Power pay me back for all of the money that had been spent on my defense. I was hoping that Traffic Power would be made to pay my legal fees, so that I could pay Aaron back for all of the money he had shelled out, but it looked like that wasn't going to happen. When I emailed Aaron and told him that, he advised that I should just take the offer of dropping the lawsuit, and I did. He said that if Traffic Power sent another, in my opinion, bogus lawsuit that he would help the story get far more media exposure than it did the first time (and it already made the Wall Street Journal). Overall, Aaron had paid well over $10,000.00 for my defense over the past year, and I have no way of paying him back. The best thing I can do is to offer my gratitude, and to recommend his book to anyone who wants to learn how to promote their site. Aaron is an unusual individual, I don't know of anybody who would have done what he's done for me, and he has my gratitude, as well as my respect. Buy his SEOBook, you won't be disappointed.

Dave