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As he looked at the traffic my own for-profit site gets (250,000 or so visitors a month), he got really interested. When he saw the traffic that was coming from Google, Yahoo and MSN, he became even more interested.
He just had his SEO guy quit, and he discovered the guy hadn't been doing an adequate job.
They have an SEO service they sell, and 90% of their SEO customers choose the top-tier program, which costs $800 a year.
He asked if I would be interested in talking about working for him, with me getting $400 of that $800 per client.
We set a time to talk for next week.
There are a number of things that they do with their program that I think are probably not effective. For example, they stress submissions to the search engines, with continual re-submissions. There's other things they stress that I think are not necessary.
At any rate, does this sound like a fair price?
Kind of difficult for someone else to answer with knowing the full situation. But on the surface I would ask what the other guy is doing to earn his $400. Looks to me like you are doing all the work. How long will it take, and will your get a good hourly rate.
Each client will be worth $34 per month to you. How much time will you need to put in per client per month to get that money out?
Another consideration is by how much will you increase client revenue. It may be worth more than the $800 the clients are paying for a mediocre(?) service right now.
Why did the other guy REALLY leave. Ask him if you can.
Are you going to hand over your valuable knowledge (secrets) for a 50-50 split?
Where are you in your business life? Do you really need that business? Might it enhance your reputation so that you can eventually break away on your own? Could you act as a consultant (for the business owner) marketing and growing your own business and keeping your knowledge to yourself? Will you both eventually be competitors?
Just a few thoughts there. Wish you luck on the out come!
What the owner is doing is the marketing and selling. Having been self-employed for 18 years, I've learned that as much time goes into that aspect as into the actual work.
What they're offering now is optimizing up to 16 pages on a client's website: title, meta tags, keywords, and graphics. (The graphics part I don't understand; maybe I'll get into that when I talk with the owner again).
They also offer as part of the deal both manual as well as automated submissions. I don't know about others here on WWW, but I generally just submit once, and only to the big three: Google, MSN and Yahoo. The SE's seem to find my sites quite well on their own.
As for "secrets," all I'm doing is following Brett Tabke's 26 steps. I must be following them well, because I've had extremely good results with the SE's.
As for where I'm at right now, I'm in bad shape at age 54. A new job (not at all web-related) didn't pan out, and money is tight. So, if this is all on the up-and-up, it could work out well.
Based upon my own rate of $50 for web-related work, I would put in 8 hours a year for each client. Whether that's enough time, I don't know.
Any other opinions are much appreciated.
Every site is different and an individual assessment should precede any effort on behalf of a client.
If the webhost is interested in selling air, then what will you sell? Perhaps optimized submissions to DMOZ and Yahoo, and a bare bones analysis with the option step up to further services?
You're right: $400 doesn't go very far for SEO work. For the sites I've done that rank very high (most are first-page on Google and the rest) I've put in dozens if not hundreds of hours.
I've tried going the freelance SEO route a couple of times, but run up against one roadblock: all of the sites I've SEO'ed are related to guns. That can be a real detriment, unless the business owner can see that it doesn't matter whether the keyword is "coil springs" or "XM-15 .45 Caliber Blaster."
What I may suggest to the owner of the hosting company is that he add a higher tier of optimization services that would incorporate pretty much everything I've learned here on WWW. (If he did that, I'd actually be able to contribute money to WWW as a thank-you for such a wealth of resources!).
Right now, though, the wolf is at the door. And this guy is offering me steady money.
His 50% cut of the price is, as I said, for the sales and promotion end of things, something I am definitely not good at. On top of that, he obviously needs to make a profit from what I do for him. Can't blame him for that.
To be honest, I'm amazed at how well I've done using the ideas I've picked up here on WWW. For one of my key phrases, I'm #1 out of over 18,000,000 results on Google. As I said, I'm first-page for just about every term I want.
It seems so simple.
For that I would develop a comprehensive OBJECTIVE BASED, QUANTIFIED, SEM plan / proposal.
or
I would offer advice on how to best develop an SEO RFP for content development at elance.
Regards,
Mike.
Before I even start SEO work I tell them they must have a site review/report.
I spend a couple of days going through the web site looking for trouble areas, produce an accurate report concerning their site and outline all the issues and problems.
I then use this report to sell more time and offer additional services.
you have to remember that some sites have far too many issues that need resolving before SEO work can begin.
The site/business owner I believe would appreciate some education concerning the project and what additional costs may occur for the project to succeed.
We provide an overall site report then sell SEO packages based on their site and budget.
50-50 is not fair to me, I would suggest agreeing a hourly rate and then him receiving a sales commission for providing you with a client allowing you to carry on yourself.
