I am very well aware of ROI and what it means in business, as I am paid to provide the best ROI for all of the services I provide to genuine businesses in various industries. There is no tolerance for BS, and when the rubber hits the road, it comes down to real numbers and not nuance.

There is no such thing as "ROI on stats": you can only have a return on investment if there is a manner of measureable resturn or potential, and risk of depreciation, and this refers usually to a product, program, or dynamic operation (such as a process or prescription, like anything from a training program to an application applied to manufacturing); and "stats" (or statistics) are concrete static data numbers either individually or referentially grouped to comprise a new perspective or composite.
> There is potential ROI on a program, and only if a real program (not some basic pile of half-understood concepts Mickey-Moused into a look-alike outline) includes the essential ingredients for action, identifiable results, and definable goals. This is because the investment is not limited to purely capital: it could be "sweat equity", time, contributions from outside sources, and the like.

Pay Per Click programs are a total waste of money and are worthless to all but the very low-rung websites who are desperate enough to pay to deliver the very least desirable and typically the most non-converting visitors.
Granted, the hard-click visits do add to the overall balance of increased metrics by sheer contribution of their visit (although it is always better to deliver to interior pages rather than the main page -- something PPC fans fail to grasp as well), but they are only perpetuating both the myth of their effectiveness and the profitability of Google, Yahoo, and the others who force-feed this pabular program onto unsuspecting websites. Why do you think they simply give away PPC credits? They know that those incapable of properly preparing and managing their websites will gradually become dependent on this type of program for all traffic, rather than learn to develop dynamic content, evolving optimization methods, and updated sites altogether!

Silver Spoon? Really.....I thought the days or flinging poo were over with!
I am the first to encourage our VH peers to take the time to really plan, to learn, and to engage in methodical development of their websites, knowing that they will reap the rewards in direct proportion to their own efforts and time invested. For the most part, that is the one thing they can do for free that will have the greatest impact on their level of success they will find possible to attain, for there can be little added on later in any manner of program or process (self-implemented or paid for) that will have a positive impact if the foundation and clearly cognizant plan itself is not sound or capable of sustaining a higher degree of technical enhancement! The website needs be built with care to detail, and in a manner worthy of presenting to the web itself" there is no excuse for cutting corners or to expect instant results, especially for websites that are rudimentary at best.

The ability to perform true and effective elements of optimization for the majority of websites encountered here in VodaTalk are severely limited at best. In fact, much discussion and tossing about of terms and half-explained concepts have given rise to a mis-conception of optimization altogether, for most of the precepts "shared" herein are really nothing more than pre-optimization, and rarely are they even implemented accurately. Page Title, Key Words, Description, and H-Meta are indeed important (as they are core to optimization), but that is not the top of the mountain. Clean code, KW valuations and current search results, market stance, competitor placements, and more all have direct bearing on the development/rotation/relevance/permanance of PT, KW, and Description and their use: it takes a lot of time and true understanding to source the information to begin to relate it to this "simple" task, and many "professionals" themselves are not really up on it!

Real optimization (as a program) includes efforts applied outside the site itself, as you know, such as articles, blog and forum posts, "link seeding" (I hate that term and practice, unfortunately, but it needs be done), balanced link strategy, and even affilate programs....anything to build credible relevance across the web to generate easily motivated hard metric traffic....again, part of a cohesive overall plan worth developing. And, many of these elements can be performed without relying on outsourced talent, but usually the time it takes to develop each part and implement them usually means that they are deployed incoherently and without much effect or impact (often they are too old or without "bearing" anymore, and lose real 'relevance'). This is why for the most part, once the basic structure of a compliant website is reached, for those seeking raid development of optimally motivated traffic and site elevation/evolution, buying into a professional optimization service for at least 6 months (and as short as one year) makes sense.
IN LIEU OF THIS OPTION, 'webmasters' themselves need to create a detailed plan of their own, invest the time and effort to make it implementable and self-managable, and to become capable of instituting it themselves ----- and thus the ROI on a "program" that I emphasized and suggested.... not on "stats" (statistics), for they are what they are, and are the result of out-of-reach variables: you cannot 'invest' in how many XP or Mac visitors will arrive, or predict how many from the Netherlands, nor even how many will come at all for example!

Maybe you intended something altogether different with your "Silver Spoon" comment? I would tend to agree if you were trying to nail down my penchant for complete integrity, and for demanding the same from others: I speak only to that which I know, have experience in, and can provide defense for in any situation or environment. And I certainly do not reach higher than my understanding, nor do I expect anyone else to either. Yes, I am not unfamiliar with paying others to do things, but I know to the n-th degree what I expect to be done, and in what manner, often demanding things not done before (which prove to be both enlightening and "lively" shall we say): I simply do not have the time to fiddle-fart around experimenting or myopically focusing on minutia like some, for my time is rigidly structured between daily operations and "developments".

That is why I encourage my peers to do everything they can themselves with a broader understanding than a mantra that they pick up anywhere, and to be aware of a greater set of understandings that they deserve to be exposed to so they might have the opportunity to select which they might find contributory to their own situation. And...there comes a time that you can't always be expected to do it on your own, but when approaching an outside provider with a pre-determined plan or details of actions, you will not only get a better ROI but predicatable results.


PS: IMO