Introduction to Making Money with SEO
SEO is one of the most powerful skills you can have, but did you know that there are 12 different ways to make money with it? Well today, I’m not just giving you the list. I’m ranking them from least effective to the absolute best, and trust me, you want to stick around because the number one strategy could completely transform your business or career.
Starting an SEO Software Business
So all those SAS businesses have high income potential and are extremely scalable. They also require tons of upfront capital. For example, my partner and I have personally invested nearly 500,000 into our SEO content optimization software, Rank-Ability. And according to founder, the upfront investment for SAS is between $10,000 to $30,000 and can get into six figures if you need to hire developers. And there is a ridiculous amount of competition in the SEO software industry. We analyzed the software industry and found at least 287 different SEO tools.
Competition and Capital Challenges
You’d also be competing against companies that are well funded, like semrush, who raised at least $40 million according to crunch base. Now I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s definitely not the best place to start when you’re new to the SEO industry. So now let’s move on to one on one SEO consulting or coaching, which lands on the B tier for me.
One on One SEO Consulting
You can actually make an awesome income doing this. First, your income potential is capped because there’s only one of you and you can’t make more time. It’s also not scalable because you have to do the work and show up for the calls. On the other hand, one on one SEO consulting requires zero upfront capital to start, and it’s a low risk SEO business model.
In House SEO Professional
And now it’s time for the next way to make money with SEO, which is get hired as an in house SEO professional. And this one lands on the D tier because your income potential is not only low, but capped. The average salary for an SEO professional in the US is around 62,000. But let’s say you rise to the ranks and get to be an SEO director. Well according to glass store, you can make a solid $142,000 per year.
Income Limits and Job Security
After taxes, you take home about $96,000, which would put you in the top 1% of earners in the world and in the top 10% in the United States. But the reality is that most people will never get to that level. And even if you did, you’ll hit a ceiling. The other problem is that job security is a myth. You could get laid off or fired, and your income is gone overnight.
Value and Income Security
So at the end of the day, the only income security you have is based on your skills. A quote that’s stuck with me since 2011 is from Dan Kennedy, and he said that your income is directly proportional to the amount of value you add to the marketplace. In other words, if you want income security, you need to become more valuable.
Productized SEO Services
And the next way to make money with SEO is through selling productized SEO services, which I’m placing on the A tier. And this is one of my favorite techniques for a few reasons. First, it’s much lower competition. It’s easier to become known as the onpage SEO guy than to just be the SEO guy. It’s also much easier to build a brand around specific productized services.
Opportunities and Limitations
If I was starting today, I’d consider building a productized service for SEO content optimization because there’s a huge gap in the market for this. And all you would need to do is use rankability to streamline your entire business. Now the only downside of productized SEO services is that they aren’t as high ticket as full service SEO, meaning your income potential is capped on the front end. But you can make a killing on the back end.
Link Building Services Agency
And now moving on to the next technique, which is starting a link building services agency. Now this might surprise some people, but this one lands on the F tier. Back in 2016, I made over $470,000 selling backlinks. There’s no doubt that you can make money with it, but there are some big challenges with this model.
Margins and Market Saturation
First, it’s not that profitable. Backlinks are expensive now, so your margins will be tiny after paying for placement and creating content. But the biggest reason why it’s in the F tier is because of competition. Everyone and their mother has a link building company these days, and I get over 10 emails per day from people or companies trying to sell me backlinks.
Alternative Link Building Angles
So with that said, if you wanted to sell backlinks, then I’d recommend coming from a completely different angle. I like what one gotch SEO academy student Allen did with growth gorilla. Instead of just being a general link building agency, he focused on B2B SAS companies. The other technique is to resell a proven high quality link building service like search intelligence.
Reselling Digital PR Services
So if you go to digital PR, you’ll be able to see the white label services option that search intelligence has. And this is basically a smaller version of what they offer at their main agency. But if you wanted, you could of course use this service to drive links to your agency website or any of the projects that you personally own.
Authority Websites
So the next way to make money with SEO is to start an authority website. And this one lands on the D tier. And I actually really like the authority site model, but it’s not easy to execute for a beginner. I’ve been running got SEO dot com for over 10 years and invested thousands of hours in content.
Benefits of Authority
But with that said, authority websites are awesome for a few reasons. First, the income potential is unlimited. Once you have authority and traffic, you can monetize however you want. At any moment, I can start offering SEO consulting on my website and immediately start making sales. That’s the power of authority.
Risks and Investment
Also building an authority website is much less riskier than some other techniques because authority sites usually have strong backlink profiles. As a result, most authority sites survive Google updates with only some scrapes and bruises. But the downside is that it requires a huge upfront and ongoing capital and time investment.
Micro Niche Websites
Which brings me to an alternative, which is to build a micro niche website, which I actually place on the C tier. And I love micro niche websites because it requires almost zero capital to get started other than a domain and hosting. It’s low risk, and you don’t need a decade of SEO experience to get results.
A Bridge to Bigger Opportunities
You can leverage your results from your micro website to land SEO clients, then use the client revenue to reinvest into an authority website that will be much more lucrative. I view micro niche sites as a bridge to better techniques, and it’s perfect for beginners.
Top Tier SEO Business Models
And now finally, I’ll do the first of two S tier ways of making money with SEO. And the first one is starting a city focused SEO agency. So instead of trying to be an SEO company that targets all the United States, you’d pick a city and become the go to pro in that city.
City Focused SEO Agency
This is what I did back in 2013 when I started my SEO company. I ranked for St Louis SEO, which became my number one source of new leads and clients. And even though I rarely take on clients now, I still rank for this keyword. And people underestimate how much opportunity there is in just your local area.
White Label SEO Services
Now moving on to the next technique, which is offering white label SEO services to agencies. And this one lands on the A tier. There’s almost no upfront capital required. The competition is much lower, and you only need a few agency clients to make a killing because they do all the marketing, sales, and customer service.
Campaign Volume Advantage
One agency client might give you 10 campaigns to work on, which means you could technically be making over $1,000 per month with just one client.
National SEO Agency
We only have two more to go. And the final F tier way to make money with SEO is to start a national SEO agency. The income potential is very high, but you’d need strong business development skills, lots of capital, and the competition and skill level requirements are extremely high.
Niche SEO Agency
The final S tier way to make money with SEO is starting a niche SEO agency. This has all the benefits of client services, but lower competition and easier marketing, sales, and fulfillment. If you need proof, take a look at Chris dryers agency rankings, which only focuses on lawyers, and they do around 20 million per year.