In regards to SEO...

SEO is always a long term strategy.. we can never expect fast results exceptthere e\are only 200 competitive pages, which is not good in case of profitable niche

I think Google plays a little part in building people's hopes by showing new sites in the top serps for a few days and then sending the site to the back of the line.
Many noobs figure since they hit top serps for a new site that they did something correct and when it falls back several hundred pages after a few days of glory people race to get those top placements back. Often trying anything that they can.

Before I ever took on the challenge of placing in the video games sales race I knew that it would take a couple of years to place in the SERPs with the big boys. But now it is starting to pay off and my traffic is very targeted as I included the keyword "buy" in many of my keyword phrases. The only place I target the word free is for my Arcade. Though I am hitting some of the lucrative broad matches the "buy" type targeted phrases convert the best.

I agree that many of the good backlinks come without trying, some of my best backlinks come from the content and by people finding it on their own. Just recently I noticed that a Toronto News station picked up one of my blog posts (parent's guide to video game systems) and published it on one of their high pr main pages. I was more thrilled because they thought it was worthy than I was about the backlink

Yeah, patience certainly comes in handy in the SEO game.

Well those quick fixes you are talking about are the daily steps to your long term success. I think the key is that if you see stuff not working you keep on going at it till you see the right way to work it. Every situation is different so that is why it is important to get amazing at one thing.

I was actually thinking that sandbox is a good thing. Why?

Example: Making a new site....i often spend days and days after the site is made and still do a lot of changes....so its good google is also patient and allows some time to do structure changes..there is still so much to tweak....and thats the reason google is sandboxing because they know that RARELY a site is going up which is perfect right away

I don't agree that SEO has to be looked at as a long term strategy, I think that if you spend the time to find a couple of really good longtail terms that have a high search volume and little or no competition, you can rank very quickly. Now I'm not saying that you are going to have an easy time finding those keyword phrases because their just not there in all niches, but they are there in a lot.

I have had great success with with short term SEO, when I build my links I am not looking for great numbers, and I am not in a hurry. I look for just a few very good links and let the rest of my links grow from natural prorogation over time.

i too like to look at SEO as a long time whole. Yes you can do some short term work and rank well , but if you want to secure your ranking and work towards stability you should look at it as continual thing. Always look at the big picture. If you got a high ranking with just an hour worth of work for that easy long tail, just keep in mind that someone else could come in and do the same.