I had someone track me down through a blog today, and ask me how I learnt about SEO, and did I have any certificates to prove how good I was. (I think he doubted me)
Anyway, no. I didn't learn SEO from a school, I learnt it by trial and error, but thought you might be interested to know about my humble beginnings.

I first started learning about SEO almost 10 years ago, before I knew it had a name.
We owned a Stock Photography Bank in New Zealand, and I noticed that if words were repeated on a page several times, that that page was like to appear higher in search engine results, the more times the word was repeated the higher it would appear in search engine results.

Through my interest, and inquistive nature, I realised if the title of the webpage - the bit that shows at on the top bar of your browser - had the same keywords, the page didn't need to have the word repeated so many times and yet it would still appear high, and sometimes higher, in search engines.

Time went on, and I learnt how to read the code that makes up any webpage, and found there were other places that, if the keywords were repeated, that the page would rank even better in search engines.
Through applying what I learnt, and I have to admit making a few mistakes, I managed to get our Stock Photo Bank, ranking right up on page one of Google, often higher than the world's largest stock photo banks like Corbis and Getty.

Once I saw this happening I was hooked. I found out about website statistics, and how to find out how many people were visiting my website, where they were coming from, what browsers they used, even what time of day they visited most, and then noticed how visitors rose at the same time my website started ranking well, and that each change I made that increased our site visablity, increased the amount of visitors. Now I was an utter addict.

I also found that changing the words slightly on every page, I could get the website listing higher for many different search.

Whats this SEO thing?
Somewhere about here, someone told me about SEO, and how it sounded like pretty much like what I was doing.
I joined a few forums, and mailing lists (about 50 different things). And yes, that's what I had been doing. I found though that many of the SEO big wigs were giving people information of how to do things, and the information wasn't true. It sounded good, but from experience I knew better ways of doing it.
I started adding my comments to posts and got a few people's dander up: who was I, an uneducated hick from New Zealand of all places, telling them what to do... I didn't tell anyone what to do, I just suggested different ways.... and when I pointed out the SEO was so new, it was, and still is hard to get an education from anywhere, I was barred from a forum.

I still belong to a few forums, that aren't owned by SEO gurus, but usually withhold my comments now or at least the ones I make on forums. Anyway back then....
I had the coder that kept the photo gallery running, and had him add SEO features, and so were the beginnings of a SEF CMS. I didn't know then 6 years later I would eventually build a Search Engine Friendly, Content Management System.

We started building website for other people. And I applied what I knew to their sites, not realizing others could see the skills I had. Then someone wrote to me, about our stock photo bank, and asked why they always saw it in search engines, for every search they ever did for photos and stock photos. He asked me if i could do the same thing with his site, and offered me $1000.... wow this was cool, getting paid for something I would have done for free!

And so it went, I wouldn't and won't take a job unless I knew I could make a difference, and until recently websites that were database driven were a challenge I couldn't rise to - I didn't know how to edit codes for these sites, as it was very different to sites that where html.

Recently I met a coder, who is now working for me regularly, that will add coding to database driven website, opening up a whole new world be me, so now I can do SEO on any website I'm presented with.
To date I have done SEO on over different 40 websites, and am currently working on 7 sites, I have a personal limit of 10 sites at a time, as I like to give each site the time it deserves.

I now have 4 people working for me, doing the more time consuming aspects of SEO's like directory submissions, and finding linking partners, but I always do the important work myself as I like to know exactly what's going on.

I understand that people coming to me for my services are in need of help, and often wonder if the investment I'm asking them to make will be worthwhile, when I know they have tried so many other things, and are dubious about this working. The least I can do is make sure it works, and the only way to do that is to do the work myself.

I have noticed that other people I employ to work for me, just don't have the instinct or gut feelings that are needed to be an SEO, and while they are happy to do the work, they just can't see how important it is, that any payment they may get must bring results to the person that paid them.

My goal with SEO is to earn $2000USD a month, and with up to 10 smaller business paying me $200 a month on average, this is obtainable. Sure I should charge more than what I do, but to be quite honest, I don't want to earn that $2000 and more from just one big company, but at the rate I should charge, I would only be working 20 hours a month.

I live on the computer, so could do 20 hours work in one sitting, what would I do for the rest of the month? I'd far rather help out 10 smaller businesses, and work for less, and give those 10 clients more results than they expect.