James Schramko here with a video on how to scale your SEO business.
One of the questions I get asked from people who intend to resell the SEO service is "How
much technical knowledge do they need to have to be able to do that?" Well, when I started
selling SEO in local business services, I had a lot of knowledge. I knew how to build
a website, I knew how to do the SEO and I did everything myself. The problem is, we
only have 180 hours a month so you scale up and then you get to the limit. I estimate
most people can make 150, 200, maybe 300,000 dollars by yourself before you start needing
to get teams. But you're going to be absolutely flat-strapped. This is if you have premium
customers, they're coming to you without too much marketing effort and you're able
to do the work competently. Now, for most people, the technical knowledge
can be a big handicap because it stops you from being the ultimate business owner. You
should be focusing on marketing, project management and customer service so that you can build
a scalable business. "Scalable" means you can actually lift up the revenue beyond
those hundreds of thousands, get into the mid-hundreds or the 7 figure -- that million-dollar
plus range. That's certainly possible for people who resell my services and that's
because they're not doing the work, that's the essential thing.
When you are buying a "done for you" service at a wholesale level and then you put a margin
on top, then your job is just to get the customers and to make sure they're happy. And you
can just keep ordering more and more and more because there are services out there, whether
you use mine or someone else's, that are scalable that can actually cope with ten times
more volume than you're doing today. So if you let go of that technical thing, think
of it like you don't have to be the expert violinist in the orchestra. You could be the
conductor of the orchestra instead. Pay your violinist a fee but take the ticket sales
for the whole event. So how do you get fresh news if you're reselling
to local businesses? Well one thing is, just watch my SEO news each week and get ideas
from that. Because what my team do is they scour the internet and they also go through
all of our hundreds of customers' results and they look at link profiles, changes in
the algorithm and tools, and they have a look and see what the data is telling us from Google
Webmaster Tools, right through to paid tools, subscription services like Majestic SEO and
AHREFS. And we aggregate all that information and I come to you with a short summary of
what's happening in the market. Truly it's one of the biggest costs is actually
having the people to man this research and development but I'm committed to doing it
because we have a substantial business interest. Now if you have a first time customer and
you're not sure how to get the technical understanding of what to help them with, take
out website check at SEOPartner. Now of course the intention is that you would take out a
check, deliver the results that we send you to the customer and then order from us when
you need to have the job done, and I need to keep it available for genuine customers.
So one website check per customer, use that to go and get your job; at least you'll
get a good understanding of our process. We work really hard to work with you to make
it easy for you to get out there and win business. The other final question on how to scale is
"Where do you get your leads?" The best leads you'll get are referrals from existing
happy customers. That's how our business has grown. Word of mouth referrals are number
one but make sure you get out there, watch some of my other marketing videos, go to live
events, get some kind of direct response marketing happening, whether it's via videos, or mail,
or called telesales, appointment setting. There's lots of things you could do to generate
leads but start with your existing customers and ask them "Who else can you look after
in the same way that you've looked after your customer?"
Well, I'm James Schramko, I hope these tips help you scale your SEO business. I'd be
happy to be helping you with that from our SEOPartner site.