You have lots of posts telling advanced seo blackhats how to play the game. What if you’re a teenager hoping to get in on the industry? What do you do? Almost all information out there is wrong. Where should I start trying to read? Should I learn to code? -clay whittaker (age 15)

Move over Eminem; I’m the new teenage role model.

Rather than selling you some snake oil, let me lay out the best advice I can give for your long-term online business success so I can be assured that it is ignored.

Warning: This advice is going to sound lame – good advice always does.

1. Learn how to speak and write correctly. Wow. It’s, just a week after my 29th birthday and I’m already starting to sound like an old man. You know all that crap they tell you in school about how learning to speak and write correctly is important? Well it’s true. Sure, you can be a search engine spammer today without knowing how to write. However, being an exceptional speaker and writer will help you today and will be imperative in the future.

2. Learn people skills and how to sell. Study books like How to Win Friends And Influence People, The Sales Bible, How To Sell Anything to Anybody, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Think and Grow Rich. Most of the big money online comes from making deals in person. Knowing how to sell and what makes people tick will help you close the big deals and make more money. All of these books should be available at your public library.

3. Study the writing styles of the most popular online writers. HOW these people write is much more important than WHAT they write. As you read something compelling, ask yourself “How has the writer made this more interesting than it may have been otherwise?”, “What makes this writing exciting?” When you’ve got it, work those stylistic elements into your writings.

4. Submit stories to established sites. This one requires it’s own post (Coming Soon!). As you read about things that interest you on the Net, submit them to established sites like Boing Boing, Slashdot, Fark or whichever sites cover topics that are interesting to you. This will help you learn Web culture, what kinds of stories get green-lighted, and how to write headlines and a synopsis. When you do become a trusted submitter, it will be easier to promote your own sites – so use an online name that is memorable (more like Quadszilla, less like clay whittaker).

5. Learn HTML and some PHP. If for some reason you don’t already know html, learn it. Learn about databases and building dynamic web pages – PHP and MySql are a good place to start.

6. Start a Website or 10. The best way to get your feet wet is to jump in. Buy some domains, get some virtual hosting and start websites on topics that interests you. Blogging and how to run successful website is more than I can cover in 1 post, but there is plenty of information out there on how to do that (although, like you said, most of it is wrong). Build up a following – it’s tougher than you might think and you’ll learn a ton in the process. Trial and error are great teachers, and time is on your side.

I don’t imagine that any teenager would have the attention span to finish reading the above advice – let alone follow it. But let me just make sure it’s ignored by adding this thoughtful quote:

When I was thirteen I knew a great deal more than I do now. There was a sentence in my grammar that disgusted me. It was by some foreigner I had never met. His name was Shakespeare. It was this:

“Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a priceless jewel in its head;
And thus our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

“Tongues in trees,” I thought. “Trees can’t talk! That man is crazy. Books in running brooks! Why nobody never puts no books in no running brooks. They’d get wet. And that sermons in stones! They get preachers to preach sermons, and they build houses out of stones.”

I was sorry for Shakespeare–when I was thirteen.

But I am happy today that I have traveled a little farther. I am happy that I have begun to learn the lessons from the bumps. I am happy that I am learning the sweet tho painful lessons of the University of Adversity. I am happy that I am beginning to listen.

For as I learn to listen, I hear every tree speaking, every stone preaching and every running brook the unfolding of a book.

- Ralph Parlette, The University of Hard Knocks