You’re a white hat webmaster.
It’s 10 o’clock at night, and you’re lying in bed next to your wife.
Your blog – KittyFitness.com – has gone from humble beginnings with zero readers on a stock WordPress theme to now having tens of thousands of e-mail subscribers and hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors.
At its height last year, your site brought in over $25,000 in one month.
Since then, your revenue has been steadily declining as you’ve lost search engine rankings to new black hat SEO competitors.
There’s a good two feet of space betwixt you and the wife. Both of you are in your own worlds, focused on your bedtime reading.
You less so than her.
Your eye wanders from Tribes by Seth Godin to the silhouette of her lithe figure and the silk bedsheets falling from her curves.
It’s been six months now since she gave birth to your second daughter. The two of you haven’t been intimate since then.
You roll over toward her and slip your hand under the covers. You slide your hand between her robe and start massaging right below her navel – her favorite.
“Not now, honey,” she says sternly.
“Oh, come on…” you say. “Why not? The girls are asleep.”
You decide it best not to mention that six month thing.
“I’m just a little stressed,” she says. “That’s all.”
“Stressed?! What about?”
“I’m worried about our business,” she says.
“Baby, I know traffic is down a bit, but it’s temporary,” you say. “Google is going to punish those cheating, copycat sites any day now.”
“You’ve been saying that for six months,” she says. “And they’re all still there.”
“Just be patient, honey,” you start rubbing on her stomach again.
“Have you looked at last month’s income statement?” She says then rolls over so her back is turned to you. Your hand drops benignly to the mattress. “KittyFitness barely brought in $15,000.”
“That’s still a lot of money,” you reply. “Plus, I haven’t launched any new products lately.”
“Yes, but the girls will be starting pre-school in a few years. How can we afford to send them to private school? We still have a mortgage and two cars to pay for, you know.”
“Pre-school?!” you say, realizing tonight won’t be the night to break that six month streak. “That’s years away! Google will have updated their algorithm ten times by then.”
“Maybe,” she says. “But why can’t you do anything about it?”
“Baby, I’ve explained this a million times…”
“My father always said if anybody threatened our family, he would go after them with everything he had,” she says. “I just don’t understand how you can just stand by and let those scammers beat you. That’s all.”
You feel like you’ve been punched in the gut. Your body grows numb. There it is with her father again.
He’s never respected you.
Even with huge checks coming in the mail every month, he always pokes fun of you for running that ‘computer cat shit business’.
You can hear him right now…
“What’s the matter — cat got your keyboard?” and “When are you going to get a real job – like as a unicorn gynecologist?”
Before dinner on Father’s Day, you overhead him tell your wife that you weren’t man enough to ever give her a son.
She didn’t disagree.
You roll back over to your side of the bed with your mind racing.
Something’s got to change.
But you’ve followed every rule Google has by the book! You’ve never bought a link and always “nofollow” your business partners.
