Who else is in the SEO industry?

[Lampard]

Have you ever thought about how big an industry is? How many people actually work as SEOs or who are the people looking up SEO information (http://www.seowebdirectory.com). One would assume that for X amount of SEOs only Y amount of them are actually vocal.

So Danny Sullivan polled his search engine land visitors recently asking them about their work and experience.

65% worked in SEO for more than 3 years, of which 40% said more than 5 years.

Only 30% of them work at a SEO firm (http://www.yourseo.com), of which 25% work for a company as a search marketer.

According to Danny, they aren't done 'crunching the numbers' from the survey and he will release more information in the near future. I wonder how many people took place in the survey?!

[Zimor]

25% of the 30% work for a company as a search marketer (http://www.seomart.com)? Guess that's me, but I just got "downsized". I'm probably not alone out there either, I did SEO for this company for 2 years...and they never really "got it" as far as the importance of conversion or organic traffic.

It's fine, because they're really spread too thinly to utilise a concrete SEO/SEM strategy (http://www.submitshop.com), they only have one web designer, and it would take him weeks to implement the changes I would want to implement.

I think most SEO's that are in it for the long haul realise that they can work for themselves, or a small SEO company, and get the same benefits as though they were working for a firm. (without going into the office from 9-5).

I read a report recently that says it takes about 10 years to become really proficient at something...I'd agree with that in principle, the people who've been in SEO for that long (and are still active) can write their own tickets.

I wonder, as well as the numbers above, how many people tried doing SEO, and gave up within a year, two years, etc...