Give away equity share in return for SEO / PPC work?
Discussion
Frimley111R said:
Don't, just find the best PPC agency you can. Giving away a stake will be a PITA long term, assuming you can find anyone to do it for that. Agencies don't want stakes in companies as their reward.
I agree with you but unfortunately some do want equity. I've recently been advising start-ups (as part of TechStars (as on Bloomberg) and independently) who have to make their marketing fly first-time (due to limited budgets, VCs breathing down their necks, critical conversions etc). I've seen it all, agencies offering £100k of 'keyword research' for 10% equity, £1k CPA for services sold at £30, sole use of single ad networks and cramming 3,000 keywords into one ad group. The list goes on and often it's the biggest agencies at fault, although there are now so many new agencies cropping up (partly due to the Apprentice finalist) without a clue even what re-targeting is... 
I recommend the OP either keeps the marketing in-house or finds someone who has a track record, and then verify that track record with companies they've already worked for. PM me if you'd like someone to quickly look over your paid marketing campaigns.
I am in a similar position to what you are looking to hire someone into. I took a pay cut on the deal that I'd get x% of profits and then y% of equity when the profit figure got to a certain point.
To cut a long story short, I think it depends on the type of business you have and how involved with it you are. I was taken on to do SEO and a few other bits but run the business single-handedly. Our margins are so tiny that we have to sell big volumes to make decent money but will always struggle to build the volumes as we don't have the returns to pay for SEO, decent web dev, etc.
A huge amount of people still think that SEO is 'free' and that you can just build some links and make it rain. Those days are 100% over! If you don't have a good marketing budget allocated or are making 50%+ margins then I don't see how you will possibly make this work. Without a couple of grand a month to spend on competitions, give-aways for reviewers or to create some kind of content then SEO really isn't for you this time round.
You can still do SEO for 'free' but you need to sacrifice time like this guy did http://moz.com/blog/real-company-s
t-with-nothing...
To cut a long story short, I think it depends on the type of business you have and how involved with it you are. I was taken on to do SEO and a few other bits but run the business single-handedly. Our margins are so tiny that we have to sell big volumes to make decent money but will always struggle to build the volumes as we don't have the returns to pay for SEO, decent web dev, etc.
A huge amount of people still think that SEO is 'free' and that you can just build some links and make it rain. Those days are 100% over! If you don't have a good marketing budget allocated or are making 50%+ margins then I don't see how you will possibly make this work. Without a couple of grand a month to spend on competitions, give-aways for reviewers or to create some kind of content then SEO really isn't for you this time round.
You can still do SEO for 'free' but you need to sacrifice time like this guy did http://moz.com/blog/real-company-s
t-with-nothing... 
Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff