This type of title is abused in the SEO world. But I did.

It’s not matter of massive link building campaign, or stalking.

I just used my passion for something.

Last spring I read “Stop Stealing Dreams“, a free ebook by Seth Godin about what’s wrong in the school system nowadays. The book is really interesting, and Seth is there just to start a discussion about the problem, and he wants you to do something to change the current school situation.

During my reading, I was thinking: “damn, I agree with him 100%, and most of the things he is saying are the same things I experienced when I was a student”.

The book, of course, is in English. So, my first thought was: this book should be available even in Italian (as you all know, I’m Italian).

In the official page of the book , Seth Godin is saying that people are free to translate the manifesto.

SO I DID.

In few hours, I set up the italian project called “Non rubate i sogni“, and I asked a friend of mine to do the graphics. Then, with the help of Giulia, I started translating the whole ebook, and everyday I published each one of the 133 chapters. At the same time, I updated the facebook page, the twitter profile and the google+ page.

I received some visits, some people commented, some people ignored the project, and some newspapers talked about it.

At the end of the project, I made a simple PDF thanks to a wordpress plugin.

Yesterday I wrote to Seth Godin about it, and immediately he answered me back very polite (as usual) and he put a link in the Squidoo page of the book .

To me the link is the least important thing out of it. I was able to have a few email exchange with a person I admire a lot like Seth Godin. I was able to set up a nice site, to collaborate with friends, and to bring on a message in which I believe a lot: the school is screwed, and we need to stand up to change it.

From an SEO point of view, it was a nice experience, and having a link from the official page of the book is a success to me.

How did I do it?

WITH MY PASSION. Passion for changing the status quo, passion for doing something and not only complain about stuff, passion for starting a new project. I believed in something, and first of all I did this FOR ME.

I think passion is the key element on many things we have to do better.