I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony because I just don’t even know where to start with this one. Let’s just go for broke and see what happens:
- You Can’t Manage People – Even if you think you can “out-SEO” Rand, Aaron Wall, and Wikipedia to boot while riding a scooter down a hill with one brain tied behind your back as you make fun of Matt Cutts’ momma to his face, then guess what? You still need some skill managing people if you ever want to scale your income up dramatically. After all, even multi-millionaire, 1 hour a day worker Markus Friend pays people to do all of the tedious tasks that he needs done for his mega popular and mega profitable dating website.
- You Aren’t Organized – You can only let your list of link partners' contact info that you should have kept up to date go stale for so long or forget to pay your copywriter for so long or spend too much time trying to find the password for your client’s site for so long, etc. etc. before you begin to see a serious increase in stress and a serious decrease in your productivity and ultimately your money making potential.
- You Spend All Day on Forums/Blogs – If the majority of your time is spent reading about SEO instead of doing SEO, then your income will never be what it could be. Of course, I am not saying that reading and learning about SEO is not important, and in fact it is extremely important to always be learning, but you and I both know that it can be easy to justify what is really just mindless browsing as “SEO training”.
- You Have No Process – The value of your time decreases if you have to keep repeating and trying to remember steps that you should already have documented. Call it an SEO cheat sheet, call it a list of steps for researching a new niche, call it whatever you want to call it, but write it down and document what your plan of action is so you don’t waste valuable time thinking about what to do instead of thinking about how to best do what you need to do.
- You Don’t Take Risks – Whether this means striking out on your own to start your own firm to do SEO work for clients ($ potential if you are good but also some risk) or whether it means getting serious about spending some time and money to do in house SEO for your own website(s) ($$$ potential if you are really good but of course some risk as well), you have to take some risks in order to really maximize your SEO earning potential.
- You Are a Cheap Son of a Gun – If you don’t believe in yourself enough to invest in tools that will make you a better SEO, then good luck because that is all you have – luck. Think of yourself and your SEO education as an investment. Pretend you are putting yourself through “SEO School” and spend some money all the while realizing that this investment in yourself will pay off in with a higher future earning potential.
- You Treat SEO as a Hobby – I’m going to tell you something that you may not enjoy reading… SEO is work. There, I said it and now I feel better. SEO has fantastic opportunities to make a great deal of money if you are smart, willing to learn, and you work hard. However, the same principles for offline business success hold true online in the SEO realm as well. There is no magic elixir that shoots through your cable modem into your PC and right through your mouse into your fingers that makes any halfhearted lazy SEO effort you might muster up instantly fill up your bank account. Work smarter AND harder and SEO can make you a lot of money. Treat SEO as a hobby at your own risk if your goal is to make money and not just have fun.
I run a domain name tools website and I see a lot of awesome risk takers that work long hours and research domain names until they are blue in the face, and then they pounce on great domain names that will likely make them quite a nice sum of money in the future. On the other hand, there are some who maybe don’t put in the necessary research and just snap up what-ever.info piece of junk domain name they come across that strikes their fancy, hoping that their domain name “lottery ticket” will pay off big in the future.
Be someone who is dedicated to working hard and making a lot of money as an SEO. Hopefully these 7 reasons are a help to you as you strive to be the best SEO you can possibly be and make the most money possible.
BONUS REASON: “7 Reasons” just sounds better than “8 Reasons,” but maybe even the #1 thing that can hold back your long term SEO money making potential is a Short Term Focus. A long term focus wants to provide loads of quality content and offer an enjoyable user experience while a short term focus is concerned only with “gaming” the search engines or exploiting flaws in the system with no regard for long term user loyalty. Concentrate exclusively on the short term to your own money making detriment.
DISCLAIMER: I love SEO and think that SEO is a lot of fun. Money is, of course, not everything, and there is nothing wrong with doing SEO purely for enjoyment or as a hobby. That being said, making a lot of money doing SEO is also a lot of fun.
This is a great list Joel, and I'd like to add one more (that is closely related to "You Aren't Organized"):
Lack of Goal Setting
Sure "ranking #1 for online pharmacy" may sound like a great goal, but as a beginner SEO its very unlikely unless you were just hired for a large brand like CVS or Walgreens to do their SEO for them.
A new SEO needs to understand what is achievable with the resources they have, and set goals that they can meet with those resources. Getting 1000 direct referers/mo from search engines within 6 months, that's a reasonable goal for starters.
A big piece of setting goals is also taking an accurate inventory of where you are at today. How many search visitors per day do you receive now? Do you know what keywords you rank for? Do you know how many inbound links you have? Is your site indexed yet? If so, how many pages? Is your sitemap and robots.txt up-to-date and accurate
Once you have that information in hand, you'll have a better idea of where you want to be down the road. And thus you'll be able to create an achievable goal to strive for.
Exactly, I am really glad that you added that because I usually always go on and on about goal setting whenever I talk about things like this.
It has helped me tremendously over the years to write down a list of goals and then do whatever needs to be done to accomplish the goals.
If I don't know where to start then I will just start making general goals and then work to make them as specific as possible.
Nice Post JoelJonathan,
You put it very politely.
Darren would have just summed it up like so
1)You suck
2)You're too lazy to be disorganized.
3)You need to put a finger in one ear to keep your thoughts from blowing away.
4)You couldn't pour beer out of glass if the instructions were written on the bottom.
5)You still sleep with a night light.
6)Your mom dresses you funny.
7)You're more serious about what socks to wear than you are about making a buck.
Then he would finish it off with, Suck it up, get out of your moms' basement and go flip burgers until you realize there is more to life than Twitter.
Or, maybe that's just how he talks to me.
Anyway, I like your list better.
hahaha thanks!
I wish he talked to me like that, at least he deson't talk to you like some horror film stalker :)
Joel,
#6 is a great one! Tools like the SEOmoz pro and seminars like SMX are great ways to invest in yourself.
I agree completely here, I don't think I would have learned as much as I have unless I had taken up SEOmoz's offer a while back to try SEOmoz PRO for $1. The investment of tools has made life easier, and I still haven't seen anything that even compares to SEOmoz's Linkscape. =]
Ha. They drew me in with that $1 offer as well. Probably the best dollar I have ever spent on tools!
Yeah, I must agree.. feel the same way =)
SEO is work. Well said! Still, some companies prefer to do the "lazy" SEO strategies and call them "work" even when they are just half-hearted efforts.
I think it's fitting that "people skills" come first, as it seems to be the major difference between good and great SEO. I know the process piece is especially relevant in building a successful business now that everybody who can install wordpress says they do SEO. Thanks for working this up!
making money with seo is also lots of fun : LOL !!!
nice
Great post! I'm just a beginner in SEO and I really want to take this seriously. This site has helped a lot and I hope it will keep on help much more in the future.
Thanks
indeed seo as a hobby or extension has to get out of your head before you can treat seo as real work.
Emphasis on stakeholder management aka You Can Manage People.
If you're an in-house SEO, at least 50% of your working hours will be devoted to managing stakeholders.
You can be organized, have a proper process, take smart risks, spend money on the best tools and treat SEO as a real job but it all comes tumbling down if you can't work with people worth squat.
Nice post Joel,
I like the point no 6 especially.
I might add to it: Sometimes you find a good path you would have never found without walking down the wrong one. Take the risk of walking down the wrong/tough path.
All the best.
Gaurav
Sigh... guilty as charged. I think I might have my first customer with two sites though. I'll be sharing all the SEOmoz tips for sure!
Another reason might be just that you're a newbie - if you plan out your attack path wisely, work hard, manage time effectively, and most of all enjoy it, then the $ will be yours.
I know why I'm not making money at SEO, and it's not for lack of organization, being unable to get along with people, or hard work - it's for lack of being able to turn my back on friends in the businesses community that risk going under.
One just declared bankruptcy, another is facing foreclosure on his home, a third trades work out with me (he fixes my car, I work on his site). Florida is 49 out of 50, the second to the worst off state in the recession, and central Florida’s Hernando County is the second to the worst off of Florida’s 79 counties.
What makes it ten times harder though, dealing with this, is that with only one client able to pay (sort of), I’m overworked and almost ineffective and dealing with motivational problems as things break down, bills pile up, and taxes are due - and having to take on almost any size job at any price in order to survive in SEO (I have a background in Network Engineering – but SEO is a full time job, especially when combined with web design). There are times when financial pressures virtually immobilize me, when I can’t think straight focus long enough to work on a page – realizing that my cable bill is due, I still haven’t paid last years taxes, I’m eight months behind on my child support and my daughter is headed for college in less than two years.
I can’t keep doing this because I’ll burn out if I do. I need to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I happen to be good at SEO and can make a difference – the alternative is to move back up to Manhattan and make $45 an hour as a network administrator saying “Your printer works and you can now share your files.” I want to make people money, that’s how I like to prove my worth.
Thanks for your 2007 post on “SEO Pricing Costs – What Should You Charge, How Much Should You Pay” ( https://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-pricing-costs-what-should-you-charge-how-much-should-you-pay ). Even though showing clients that general pricing package and directing them toward the low end sends them quickly packing, never to be heard from again, it’s better than having to figure out from scratch how the rest of the country is pricing based on the financial climate down here. Rae Hoffman has a piece of property about fifteen miles from here and when she came down to visit in early July of 2009 she tweeted “Sad to see how badly my old town has been damaged by the recession” and, in reply to my asking if she was referring to Hernando “yea, was referring to Hernando... it's been brutalized by this recession”. (You might want to add an "8th reason")
Any SEO advice (aside from "quit SEO") on how to alleviate this situation would be most appreciated.
This may be a long shot, but aside from giving up it might help you turn the corner.
First, stop doing the work for free. Instead put out the word that once a week you will be giving a free seminar on SEO at ____ and anyone interested should show up with their questions. This is not build it from the ground up, just "SEO triage." If you get a lot of, "I don't have a website..." bring in a webpage designer for your next week. Point people in good directions to help themselves. Give them a heads up on social networking and maybe they can begin to help each other. You have to work on things that can make you money during the week. One day a week you can give to charity.
Make a list of about five to ten things that you see constantly and address those in your seminar. Take questions and answer them honestly. Don't make this a sales pitch, you won't need to. Remember, you can't save everyone but you can teach the ones that can do it themselves. People that can pay will find you. Concentrate your work days on them when they do.
Network with friends and colleagues out of the area. Not every place on the globe is in the same boat a little positive input can go a long way. Keep moving. Keep focused on surviving yourself. You can't help anybody if your not around. You have to help yourself first and that's what those around you need to do too. When your daughter was born you could have continued to read everything to her that she needed to know but it was better for her that she learned to read on her own.
Start counting victories and sharing humor. Share them with others in the community. If someone turns their business around, share it. If someone gets a job, share it. If something funny happens, share it. Make the positive news more important than the crap.
Get up again in the morning. Your daughter is counting on you. Not for the money but as an example. If you show her how to succeed in times like these. If you show her that you don't quit, she'll have more confidence in her own life and you will have taught her more than college ever could.
You can do this!
That job up north will never challenge you like this does or offer anything like the rewards either.
Keep in touch.
Many thanks Sly-Grrr,
Keeping things positive is indeed important, and your ideas are excellent. I had been thinking along the lines of starting a monthly SEO Meetup, but arranging a weekly meeting and putting out the word might well work far better.
It would give me and those who come to the meetings an injection of hope, something to look forward to, and certainly could turn things around. As a matter of fact, upon reading what you wrote I contacted a good friend and web designer not too far away and let her know about it too.
Something just struck me with this "7 Reasons" post. Frustration does not mix well with writing. Many thanks to your helpful suggestions, something good has come out of it.
Thanks again Sly. You made a difference.
i am new to seo but read your post with interest but most importantly those points dont only apply to SEO they can apply to alot of other business as well. A lot of people who are doing things wrong in other business should take your 8 points and just adapt them to their business and they would see improvements the first two for sure apply to any business in the world
great post
Great post, I think you've just inspired me to write a post about "X reasons why you might not be making money as a marketer".
Awesome! Be sure and send me a link!
Maybe it's just me, but I sense some link dropping going on.
Most important - Try and subscract business analysis from Search Engine Optimization, No money guarenteed :)
#2 You Aren’t Organized
I have read this interview (link above). The guy is really organized and optimisated. He's working an hour/day, he has only 3 cooworkers, his site's code and databases is so hot optimized that he has only 8 (eight) servers for a Alexa ranked 306th website on the net.
..... and he makes 10M/year.
Thanks for your post - I totally agree with it. Can you recommend ressources for #2 and #4?
What are the common used processes and organization patterns that would be useful for every seo? I guess there are some.
For Number 2, get used to taking notes. Keep a log on every customer so you don't have to wonder what you have or have not done and you only have one place to look for your improtant data.
for number 4, the cheat sheet this blog links to is one of the absolute best in the business put together by Danny at SEOmoz.
#2 is easy, from day one I made an excel sheet, and in that excel sheet I start off every day, then I write everything I did in that day. You have organized list of every site you ever went on, registered with, every blog post you made and the date, just by looking at one sheet.
Then when you talk to your boss or clients you have something very organized to show them as well.
Perfect ! Especially those who are newbies, have just jumped into SEO Pond, should note it down !
Way to go Joel. Posts like this are why your point #3 should be judiciously followed about the time you spend on blogs, et al.
But definitely take the time to quick read the most important and useful feeds in case they contain treasures (like this post)
I would echo jnelson312's point #10 (roadies was #9)
To be a successful entrepreneur you have to be able to be your own sales rep. You need to cultivate the art of being able to meet people, genuinely care about them, and explain to them why your business or service would be in their best interests.
Another thing many people (many people meaning myself) can probably identify with is ambition. If you don't have what it takes to get out and meet with people and call up people to try to gain business, you probably aren't going to make it.
Generating new business requires a lot of tedious work, and you can't rely on leads from your contact form forever.
Very true, SEO is at its heart very entrepreneurial which has always appealed to me.
Of course, there are becoming more and more jobs in SEO that are more "corporate" type jobs but for most SEO positions ambition is extremely important for success.
You also indirectly make a good point that in SEO (and almost anything else for that matter) if you want to make things happen then you have to ...wait for it... make things happen. Initiative and ambition are key success metrics as opposed to the passive approach of waiting for business/leads/opportunites to contact you (not to say you can't build a super profitable website to do your selling for you though :) ).
I love #5 as that goes right on with being an etrepreneur. I posted this quote the other day
"The greatest rewards come from doing the things that scare you the most. Who knows where life will take you. The road is long and in the end, the journey is the destination. "
(as a newbie SEO) I find this post quite terrifying!
You're on the right track! SEOmoz is a great place to sharpen your SEO skills. Before you know it, we will be reading a post from you!
SEOmoz is a great place to sharpen your SEO skills
As long as I don't spend all my time reading it, yeah? ;)
I actually started writing a post last night, so we shall see!
Nah erikau!
Nothin' to be skeert of :) It's just common sense that I'll bet you already knew inside but never articulated.
1)Get to know people you trust in the industry and use them to help you out when you're overworked
2)Stay organized. If it doesn't come naturally buy a book on it. It's a formula.
3)Only allow yourself to read RSS feeds for x amount of time per day/week
4)It's an offshoot of #2 you'll learn when you study the book you buy :)
5)Just do it. life is too short to be lived with mediocrity.
6)Budget some $ each month towards training/tools that will make your job better/easier.
7)Treat it like a job you report to a superior about.
8)Focus on quality not spammy when you work on sites.
9)Again, an offshoot of #2
10)Network early and often where you live. Create an elevator speech and join clubs, get on committees. Not to just "get business" but rather to make friends. When you develop friendships within the business communities, the business side takes care of itself.
Thanks :)
I don't have to worry about point 7 as it actually is my job about which I report to a superior (in-house search team).
It's more the realisation that it's not all about learning the art of SEO, but that there's a lot more to consider. Good wake up call :)
Thumbed up just for those first two sentences. I read this a second time and realized all 7 points also apply pretty well to entrepreneurs and just about anyone striking out on their own. You're going to have to take some risks, spend some money, put in a lot of hard work, get organized, and eventually rely on other people.
Great post! Not just because it's not another social media post, but because it is actually sensible and covers great points.
One more reason I'd like to add to the list: You suck at reporting & analytics.
People (SEOs) tend to think that because they know how to find data and use analytics, that that is all it takes. They fail to realize that you have to take that data and transform it into intelligent and useful information that reflects work that needs to be done, work you have done/have been doing, and just overall reporting of web/SEO success. You need to be able to pinpoint the important data, how to report on it, how to combine it into useful information, and take that data and work with it towards your goals.
You can't just take elementary level stats and think you can do useful work out of that...
Very true, I wish I would have added that under another "goals" point that "Roadies" had suggested in an above comment. Using analytics/data to arrive at specific goals for your efforts and then constantly measuring your efforts is critical.
There are some important messages in this post. If you want to be a successful SEO consultant, there are qualities and behaviours you have to develop outside of just knowing your game and even having good SEO skills.
Relationship building, professionalism, dedication, passion and the ability to lead are (in my mind) such important traits,
Good food for thought, well done on a nice post.
These are a lot of good points. Started out optimizing my own site, then my sons, then my friends . . . I'm going to have to start making money on it soon. Learned a lot and had success.
"Think of yourself and your SEO education as an investment. Pretend you are putting yourself through “SEO School” and spend some money all the while realizing that this investment in yourself will pay off in with a higher future earning potential."
I love this part. I keep mocking my lack of SEO skills as if this were an admirable achievement. Time to buckle down to work. I'd be checking back here frequently to pick up my lessons and assignments - one SEO lesson at a time.
.... and, if possible, to become a semoz PRO member. It's a good investment.
You need to be a diplomat - along with items 1 thru 7! Working as an SEO means finding problems, finding the areas where the website and everyone associated with it screwed up. To get a good job done for a client means diplomatically handling their mess!
Negotiating beuracracy requires a lot of diplomacy. Everyone at a large company has their own fiefdoms and agendas. The SEO of the site has no direct impact on their standard of living or working, so you will be perceived as a burden at best, and at worst, a risk.
Diplomacy is vital.
#6 well I sure hope I see a ROI on this Pro Membership cost!
Even if all you do is work on your own site, it'll more than pay for itself.
The reason I started down the road to learning this stuff was because I was paying 50K per MONTH in PPC ads to Google. (I used to get nice presents from them at Christmas)
Now my own website is on page one for all the related keywords, 24/7/365 (something I could never do with PPC) so that alone is saving me a little over half a million dollars per year.
You should be praying that SEOmoz never figures out the true value of what they are providing you at such a ridiculous price instead of whining about how you hope it's worth it. Honestly, you were kidding right?
I agree sly-grr. Not only do you save real investment as you've mentioned, but I've also saved an insane amount of work hours with these tools!
Agreed. I will be honest: when I first joined SEO Moz as a PRO member a couple of years ago I joined just so that I could ask Rand a private question and be guaranteed a nice detailed answer in writing (via the private question Q&A section).
I was willing to pay for a whole year of PRO membership just to get some feedback to an important technical question that I had (well worth it btw).
So the principle really is that if you dont see a very strong ROI on a PRO membership or other proven places to help you then it's really probably just that A) You really aren't taking risks and aiming high enough so that what you learn will ever be put into practice and pay off in a significant enough way for you OR B) You make so little money as an SEO that the opportunity cost of $99/month is way too high (i.e. you have to use that money for groceries).
Just to expand on your comment a little further...
Not only have I found the entire staff of SEOmoz to be profoundly helpful at every turn (I cannot say enough about how incredible and approachable they have been)
But if I Never used the tools that they have made and just concentrated on the forum they have put at our disposal in an industry like this, it more than pays for itself.
The ability to communicate and make friends with others in the business across the the country and around the world, seriously that alone is worth the FULL membership price and most people are getting it for free. (which I don't mind, the more the merrier)
I would pay for it just for the contacts alone. I have met a lot of great people. "Rock Stars" in this industry just from my connection to SEOmoz.
As you have already stated, all you have to do is take advantage of it.
Great Post. - Some people forget that running an SEO company takes more than awesome SEO skills. It takes a lot of work, management skills and organizational skills.
I like the 3rd reason a lot! Education resources can be a great help but today the world's moving far too fast so one can't afford spending months learning before you really start.
I've seen lots of INCREDIBLE sites with a deep and thoughtful approach to teaching SEO but when it comes to quick-start guides there's one site that literally gets you up-to-speed within hours. That's SEO in Practice by Dan Richmond. If anyone's interested, here's where you'll find this free SEO book.
Since the site is ranking next to Aaron Wall's in Google I guess the man knows what he's doing ;)
Hmm, it could just be my Norton Antivirus 2009 acting screwy but I clicked on your link and it just told me that it blocked a Trojan that was trying to download from the site. Even if it is nothing harmful you definitely should let him know to fix that if his site really is legitimate.