LickOfPaint

Agree with Jason.
Everyone and their dog says they're good at SEO these days.
And everyone offers the same kind of package deals.
So you need case studies of previous clients/projects to demonstrate what you can actually do, otherwise it's really tough to market yourself VS Indian SEO companies who are always much cheaper.

I stuck with copywriting for my income, because marketing my SEO experience was too hard. I now offer SEO as more of an upsell.

Be Awesome

That's the best advice anyone can give.
But basically it means that you need to have a great site, great content, be integrated with social media and do amazing and interesting things that your competitors don't.
Live and breathe what you're doing.

Building a bog standard website designed to rank in Google and then rot in cyberspace isn't going to cut it in the long term.
You can do so much better if you're active in communities online and keep promoting it with clever marketing.

Traditional marketing is still the essence of good business, not just good websites.

4li4s - as you were saying, it's not always so easy to just walk away from your problems.
 
I've had some terrible, soul destroying jobs over the past couple of years (I do freelancing in the side for extra cash)
One agency I worked at had me working 11 hour days. I ended up handing in my notice (with no other job lined up) and being signed off by the doc for 2 weeks with stress.
Another place I worked for, I handed in my notice after 2 weeks - it was that bad!

But, while both were horrible ordeals, they taught me invaluable life lessons.
 
What doesn't kill you makes your stronger (/stranger)

Make one.
 
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6FC509F1617DE20B&feature=plcp

The video itself does not matter. We can't upload duplicates anyway even with permission as youtube sees this and stops you earning revenue on the video you're about to upload.
 
Partners will always rank above ordinary people if they are close or even.
 
Ranking factors on youtube are:

interactions - number of likes and favourites it got, how many comments there are. Always ask your viewers to leave a rating, do not even feel bad about it.
Views, this is a small factor but more views equal higher ranking.
Time, the longer the average person spends watching your video the higher it will rank. This came in about 1 month ago. They also rank on how long the view spends on youtube AFTER the video has finished.
Title, put your keywords in the title. Look at our videos, they all have "photoshop speed art" or something in the title in brackets.
Description, put your keywords here as well!
tags - do not go overboard with tags. the fewer you have the better but don't miss important ones out either.

 
Also learn to use annotations to link to your other videos ect. These increase views by up to 20% we find.
 
Take a look here as well: http://tgn.tv/handbooks/
 
That is not my network but the handbooks they have made are excellent and well worth a read. Also look into the youtube playbook 2.0. Some great content in there and if you're taking this seriously read them.
 
YouTube partners get paid per 1000 views, there were over 150 partners on youtube that made over 100 thousand dollars last year according to youtube. There is big money if you have what it takes. I know channels like epicmealtime and FPSRussia are making over a million a year!
 
Also YouTube to date has only approved around 20 networks, ours took 1 year to get. Good luck.
 
There is great opportunity on youtube, machinima for example is a network and worth around 250 million dollars.

I always make sure I go out for lunch and talk to other people. Even if it's some cafe staff.
Otherwise I find the right music for my mood each morning, drink lots of tie and plough through my work.
I come on here occasionally too when the work has become mind numbing.

Come on now, it's just a journalist bashing out some nonsense to get paid -and who can blame them?
Besides, this kind of drivel has been going around for ages now...a bit like how Google+ was going to obliterate Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. It's just something for a journo to write about.