I want to talk with you about doing SEO for clients.
My thinking is… if you get good at doing SEO, why on earth would you want to have clients? Why not do it for yourself and drive the traffic to affiliate programs instead.
Now, I’ve been dishing out this advice for 10 years. I’ve given it at seminars, webinars, interviews , ebooks, and through my newsletter.
Most people who hear it say, “Are you off your rocker, are you a lunatic?” At least at first…
Seriously, if you get really good at SEO, why on earth would you want to have clients?”
You’ll spend 50% your time trying to get new clients, because if you do you job right, as a consultant, you get fired at the end. Consulting is the only job on earth, that if you do it right, you get fired.
Then you’ll spend at least 20% of your time being a bill collector. You’ll have to track time. Have meetings. Provide proof of your work. Mail out invoices.
Then, instead of paying for services when they receive the invoice, clueless clients throw you in with product suppliers. They shuffle it “down to accounting” meaning you won’t receive a payment for months. Good luck trying to collect.
So on top of trying to get new business, you’re trying to get paid for what you’ve already done. You’ll have less than 30% of your time to do any billable work.
Then you’ll have to deal with people like Fluffy (yes, that was her real name) the designer, who hasn’t got a clue about SEO. She thinks Flash makes the best web sites. (Yea, and you’ll be invisible to the millions of iPod, iPhone and iPad users.)
You’ll deal with technicians like Bob, who thinks everything should look like a database. Never mind persuasion, conversion, or user experience, search boxes and sku numbers are all that matter.
So if you get good at SEO (I continue to pontificate), why not fire all the clients, and just do the SEO for your own web properties? You could promote all sorts of products and services with affiliate programs.
Just set up the web pages. Drive traffic to them. And get recurring revenue streams. You’re in total control of your destiny, the markets you promote, and no one’s going to argue with you, or fire you at the end.
You do the work once and get paid over and over again. That’s the advice I’ve been giving to SEO professionals for many years.
The bottom line is… unless you love the hassle of having clients, why not just be quiet, stay home, do the work for yourself, and take the paychecks to the bank with no hassles? It doesn’t get any easier than that.
My advice? Stop doing SEO for other people. Fire all your clients. You’ll be happier, have a lot more free time, and you’ll make a whole lot more money than you ever could, working for someone else.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Mike, I’ve been a fan of your podcast for a long time. You add a lot to the interviews because you’re in the trenches too. You also have a soothing voice which is rare and it makes it easy to listen to.
Your premise here is interesting to me as I’m bound by my clients, in fact 95% of my income comes from clients of existing businesses, truthfully they saved me. I originally got online to be an Internet marketer, but never made enough money to survive, then one day I built a site for a girl I was dating for her massage therapy business, then I got it to the number one position.
She made an additional $10,000 the first year and as a single mom continued to make her house payments and bought a brand new Toyota Camry hybrid. Her sister was fresh out of massage school and had no clients and we had her schedule almost full in two or three months. So, this got my hair on fire.
Anyway, your thoughts are encouraging, I would like to move more in that direction and have been letting some clients go and turning down business by being more selective.
One thing I’d like to do is to post on my own blog, but I’m always doing everyone else’s. I run a few hundred WordPress blogs for clients and it keeps my head spinning.
Thanks for Your Insight and Willingness to Share, I’m on Your Side,
Glen
Hey thanks Glen… maybe I missed my calling and should have been a radio DJ or voiceover actor.
If you do move away from clients and in the direction of affiliate marketing, I’m sure you’d find it fulfilling. It’s much easier work.
There’s no commute, or meetings, or worrying about satisfying someone else… then trying to be the bill collector after you’ve done the work… and best of all its evergreen.
If you choose a market that doesn’t change often, web pages you build today, can continue to generate affiliate revenue for years to come. Some of the sites I built back in 2001 – and haven’t touched since – continue to generate revenue month after month…. Can’t do that with clients.
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