ABOUT
Hi, that’s me.
I am William Belcamino. Most people call me Bill.
I started as an electrical engineer, spent eight and a half years at HP, ended up running operations at a software company, and then spent thirteen years building and owning websites where being wrong cost me my own money rather than a client’s. Average Idiot is where I do that for other people now.
THE SHORT VERSION
200,000+
Users on the eBay selling platform I ran as COO, through to an eight-figure acquisition by Alibaba
$70M
A year in Google search syndication I owned and operated at Alot.com
8.5 years
As an engineer at HP before any of the marketing happened
The engineering came first, which is why I am comfortable in a crawl log, and the operating came second, which is why I am comfortable telling you something is not worth doing. Thirteen years running my own properties taught me the rest: mostly that the boring maintenance beats the clever campaign, and that anyone who is certain about SEO is selling something.
THE LONG VERSION
Engineer, operator, then owner
Engineer by training. Operator by experience. Marketer by choice. Here is the path, in order, including the parts where I learned things the expensive way.
- Chico State
A degree in electrical engineering, and a habit I never shook: I want to know how a thing works before I touch it.
- HP, eight and a half years
Product development engineer, program manager and supplier manager. Managing HP’s global repair suppliers, I delivered $3M in cost avoidance.
- Auctiva, COO
Operations at the number one third-party selling platform on eBay: $20M a year, past 200,000 users, through to its acquisition by Alibaba.
- Alot.com, VP of Product, New York
The person on the phone with Google about a $70M-a-year search syndication partnership.
- Thirteen years on my own money
PPC arbitrage into CPA offers, affiliate systems, Amazon FBA, domain portfolios, blog networks and a 35,000-subscriber email list. If a decision was wrong, I felt it in my own bank account.
- The agency side
I led SEO at Brandetize, for clients including Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield and Rule #1 Investing, and directed search and strategy for law firms.
- Now
Independent, in Litchfield Park, Arizona. Belcamino.com is where clients hire me, Average Idiot is the lab, and I still own and run a handful of sites myself, because I would rather show you than tell you.
Tools I have used professionally: Ahrefs, Semrush, Screaming Frog, SurferSEO, Google Ads, Amazon Ads, Cloudflare, AWS, GA4, Google Search Console, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.
WHAT I AM BUILDING NOW
I try everything on my own sites first
Anything I recommend to a client, I have already tried on a site where the risk is mine. These are three I run today. Each one is built to be read by Google and by AI assistants, and each publishes its own data so you can check the work.
Independent SaaS comparisons, priced for your team: what each business tool will actually cost, and what switching involves.
race.mxRace.mxAn English-language guide to Mexican motorsport, from F1 to the Baja 1000 and NASCAR, with its event data published openly.
projectsf.comProject SFAn independent guide to art, events and things to do in San Francisco, with its own open data program.
The live data on this site is the same idea: the numbers from every free check, published as they come in.
HOW I WORK
The things you would find out eventually anyway
I will tell you when to stop paying me
If a month goes by with nothing worth doing, I say so and we pause. This is the single most useful thing about hiring one person instead of an agency, and it is the reason I can keep clients for years.
I do redesigns, and I will tell you if you do not need one
Redesigns are the easy part, and I build them so Google and AI assistants can read the site from day one. But often the site is fine and the problem is three technical issues and a page that does not say what the business actually does. I will tell you which one you have before you spend the money.
I am one person
No account manager, no offshore pod, no junior learning on your site. You get me, same day on weekdays. The limit is that I only take a handful of care retainers at a time, so occasionally the answer is that I am full.
I show the working
Every claim in a report comes with the place you can go and check it. If I say a page got faster, you get the before and after from Google, not a screenshot of a tool I chose because it flatters me.
REFERENCES
People who have actually worked with me
“I have worked with Bill many times on many projects and he is one of the smartest, hardest working digital marketers I know. His SEO skills are some of the best in the world and he is a seasoned expert in digital marketing and lead generation. He makes complex tasks look easy.”
Brad Costanzo · Growth advisor and keynote speaker
“In addition to his expert-level grasp of the nuanced technicalities of all things digital marketing, Bill brings a passion and enthusiasm to everything he works on. Anyone who can bring that value to the table while making others around them better is a star.”
Kevin Kitchen · Marketing executive and operations leader
“I had the privilege of working alongside Bill at Brandetize for a few years, and he is an absolute standout professional. He wore many hats and consistently delivered outstanding results.”
Shannon Nigut · Social media marketing manager
“Bill and I worked together on a major conversion project where roughly 80% of revenue was affected and we had three weeks. During those 18-hour days he kept everyone pulling in the same direction. The result was a successful conversion and a 60% bump in gross revenue.”
Brian Sanders · Leader, technologist, MBA
All of these are LinkedIn recommendations. You can read them in full, and check that the people are real, at linkedin.com/in/belcamino.
A note from me
If you have read this far, there is probably a website that has been bugging you. Send me the address and one line about what is bothering you.
I will look at it myself, not a junior and not a tool, and tell you plainly whether it is worth fixing, even when the answer is “not by me”. I reply the same day on weekdays. No sequence, no pitch deck.
Bill
Where I am
Litchfield Park, Arizona, working remotely with clients anywhere. Belcamino.com is the name on the door and this is the lab. The work behind both is the same.
More on me: my agency-side portfolio at belcamino.com · LinkedIn.
By Bill Belcamino · Last updated