I graduated from Mechanical Turk to full timers about 2 years ago when our client load increased. Though SEO is a part of our work, the real money is in traffic

I graduated from Mechanical Turk to full timers about 2 years ago when our client load increased. Though SEO is a part of our work, the real money is in traffic. We achieve a better than 1/100th CPA cost with SMO as compared to PPC with Google. Think about it. Someone who clicks through to your page from Twitter/Facebook/Linked In is a known quantity. What do you know about someone that clicks on a paid link in google. Nothing. What does it cost for that click? Only your monthly publishing cost per account divided by total clicks per month. And when someone walks through the door from SMO, you got a @name, you can look up their bio, you got their thoughts in their tweets, and you know where they are from. And it cost a fraction of the price you pay Google for an unqualified, anonymous click. And with Twitter you have zero click fraud. I have cracked the code on CPA using Twitter and it begins with killer content. And I use staffing in the Philippines which cost 1/15th American dollars for same person, no taxation, no flooring cost, no legal issues. If I were Google, I would definitely figure out how to buy Twitter before it eats their PPC lunch. There are a whole lot of us X-PPC guys who no longer pay ridiculous fees to the search engines. As for the Turk, the cost is a little more than the PI and with your own staffing, you get the added bonus of continuity. You also get the benefits of knowing your staff, weekly quality review meetings, standardization of process, and a consistent quality that I found missing with Mechanical Turk. I would still recommend MT though for anyone running a few sites who needs less than full time commitment for projects.