Marketing funded websites
Discussion
KFC said:
99% of people selling seo's to small businesses are either just starting out and want you to pay them while they practice on your site, or they have already failed at seo and can only pay the bills by charging others for it.
The numbers simply don't stack up any other way, and thats an unavoidable fact that will make seo sellers squirm if you say it to them.
Sounds a bit like those trader trainers. The numbers simply don't stack up any other way, and thats an unavoidable fact that will make seo sellers squirm if you say it to them.
KFC said:
Also ignore the SEO guys who try and sell you snake oil.
If they were any good they'd be building their own sites.
What a load of utter crap!!!!If they were any good they'd be building their own sites.
SEO is just one marketing skill in the toolbox, building a website is another and building a business is a much bigger proposition. Why should someone good at a given skill build a business arbitrarily and possibly not knowing all the other skills and knowledge to run a business just because they have one skill?
That is like saying all plumbers sell snake oil and should become builders.
Stevanos said:
What a load of utter crap!!!!
SEO is just one marketing skill in the toolbox, building a website is another and building a business is a much bigger proposition. Why should someone good at a given skill build a business arbitrarily and possibly not knowing all the other skills and knowledge to run a business just because they have one skill?
That is like saying all plumbers sell snake oil and should become builders.
By comparing plumbers and builders you're showing a complete lack of understanding of how this works. Or perhaps you're a failed seo who's just a bit defensive SEO is just one marketing skill in the toolbox, building a website is another and building a business is a much bigger proposition. Why should someone good at a given skill build a business arbitrarily and possibly not knowing all the other skills and knowledge to run a business just because they have one skill?
That is like saying all plumbers sell snake oil and should become builders.
Lets look at an example one. This is not my website, I have no connection to it. http://www.debt-plus.co.uk
Its an affiliate lead generation site. If you fill in your information on that site, it'll instantly be passed to a debt management company and the website owner will be paid a fee.
The site itself is very basic... half a dozen pages and not a huge amount of content. The design itself is nothing complex. The most important thing here is every piece that needs putting in place is quick to do, costs next to nothing, and only needs doing once. Buy a domain name with a hosting package for £50 for the year. Pay a designer to knock you up a quick site if you can't do it yourself. Hire a copywriter to do a few pages if you can't write it. Once the site is done, you won't need to do anything at all to it. Any minor changes you're making later would certainly fall within what you'd need to do on other peoples seo campaigns if you were selling seo, so its the same job basically.
Once you're up and running you'd seo it like normal. When its generating traffic you would need to sign up with someones affiliate program to sell the leads. This is all going to be automated once put in place. i.e. the leads instantly go to the company in question, then your affiliate account would be credited for that lead. You don't need to do anything further. If you didn't get out of bed till 11am today you might wake up to find a handful of £50 leads already processed and in your account.
If you run this debt management site for a year you might spend say 5 hours and £500 on the design. £50 and 1 hour on the hosting. £200 and 3 hours on the content. 5 hours and no money on setting up process to sell the generated leads. Then 500 hours and £30,000 on the SEO. The other bits are just the little extras you do... the seo is the real job.
Anyone who can genuinely put out good work as an seo would need to be a fool to follow any other business model than the above. How could you possibly justify scratching around with £300 a month clients trying to rank for "buy inkjet refills online" or "plumber in Bolton" etc.
You're not making the world a better place with either of them, but at least you're making yourself a big sack of money with the way I've described
KFC said:
Anyone who can genuinely put out good work as an seo would need to be a fool to follow any other business model than the above. How could you possibly justify scratching around with £300 a month clients trying to rank for "buy inkjet refills online" or "plumber in Bolton" etc.
You're not making the world a better place with either of them, but at least you're making yourself a big sack of money with the way I've described
Surely though if all these SEO people started setting up sites similar to the one above, won't the big sacks of money turn into smaller pouches as the competition increases?You're not making the world a better place with either of them, but at least you're making yourself a big sack of money with the way I've described
At which point it becomes more effective to go back to charging £300 a month to do SEO for plumbers.
I've been running an affiliate site for about 18 months which is working fairly well, and last year considered doing something in the payday loan area, but it looked to me like it was pretty well saturated already. So it's interesting that you think there is still scope to make money there.
KFC said:
Stuff
Have to agree with KFC, those who can't influence paid or algorithmic listings setup agencies, the rest make millions and then get asked to offer agency services to those people let down by the former (or even to the agencies themselves)! 
Off-topic, KFC, did you start out in arbitrage? You sound just like someone I know...
ehasler said:
Surely though if all these SEO people started setting up sites similar to the one above, won't the big sacks of money turn into smaller pouches as the competition increases?
At which point it becomes more effective to go back to charging £300 a month to do SEO for plumbers.
The SEO's who know what they are doing will win and they'll make 5 or 6 figure monthly salaries. The failed seo's will go back to selling seo services to local plumbers.At which point it becomes more effective to go back to charging £300 a month to do SEO for plumbers.
ehasler said:
I've been running an affiliate site for about 18 months which is working fairly well, and last year considered doing something in the payday loan area, but it looked to me like it was pretty well saturated already. So it's interesting that you think there is still scope to make money there.
It all comes down to how much you trust your own skill set / access to resources to pull it off. You can absolutely make £1000+ a day as a payday affiliate if you're good at it. sa_20v said:
Have to agree with KFC, those who can't influence paid or algorithmic listings setup agencies, the rest make millions and then get asked to offer agency services to those people let down by the former (or even to the agencies themselves)! .
At the very high end there is room for decent agencies. As if you're working for say Vodafone you could use tactics that I can't use as an independent affiliate (leveraging brand strength and user base and so on), and I guess those agencies will still be willing to pay well for results. Its just when you get down to the piss poor end of the market its pretty obvious that people are selling seo as they're either learning, or hopeless. And do you really want your businesses success or failure hinging on an apprentice or a clown .sa_20v said:
Off-topic, KFC, did you start out in arbitrage? You sound just like someone I know...
Nope, its not me.KFC said:
By comparing plumbers and builders you're showing a complete lack of understanding of how this works. Or perhaps you're a failed seo who's just a bit defensive
Lets look at an example one. This is not my website, I have no connection to it. http://www.debt-plus.co.uk
Its an affiliate lead generation site. If you fill in your information on that site, it'll instantly be passed to a debt management company and the website owner will be paid a fee.
The site itself is very basic... half a dozen pages and not a huge amount of content. The design itself is nothing complex. The most important thing here is every piece that needs putting in place is quick to do, costs next to nothing, and only needs doing once. Buy a domain name with a hosting package for £50 for the year. Pay a designer to knock you up a quick site if you can't do it yourself. Hire a copywriter to do a few pages if you can't write it. Once the site is done, you won't need to do anything at all to it. Any minor changes you're making later would certainly fall within what you'd need to do on other peoples seo campaigns if you were selling seo, so its the same job basically.
Once you're up and running you'd seo it like normal. When its generating traffic you would need to sign up with someones affiliate program to sell the leads. This is all going to be automated once put in place. i.e. the leads instantly go to the company in question, then your affiliate account would be credited for that lead. You don't need to do anything further. If you didn't get out of bed till 11am today you might wake up to find a handful of £50 leads already processed and in your account.
If you run this debt management site for a year you might spend say 5 hours and £500 on the design. £50 and 1 hour on the hosting. £200 and 3 hours on the content. 5 hours and no money on setting up process to sell the generated leads. Then 500 hours and £30,000 on the SEO. The other bits are just the little extras you do... the seo is the real job.
Anyone who can genuinely put out good work as an seo would need to be a fool to follow any other business model than the above. How could you possibly justify scratching around with £300 a month clients trying to rank for "buy inkjet refills online" or "plumber in Bolton" etc.
You're not making the world a better place with either of them, but at least you're making yourself a big sack of money with the way I've described
And when the affiliate deal is closed you have no business left. Ok whilst it lasts but not concrete.Lets look at an example one. This is not my website, I have no connection to it. http://www.debt-plus.co.uk
Its an affiliate lead generation site. If you fill in your information on that site, it'll instantly be passed to a debt management company and the website owner will be paid a fee.
The site itself is very basic... half a dozen pages and not a huge amount of content. The design itself is nothing complex. The most important thing here is every piece that needs putting in place is quick to do, costs next to nothing, and only needs doing once. Buy a domain name with a hosting package for £50 for the year. Pay a designer to knock you up a quick site if you can't do it yourself. Hire a copywriter to do a few pages if you can't write it. Once the site is done, you won't need to do anything at all to it. Any minor changes you're making later would certainly fall within what you'd need to do on other peoples seo campaigns if you were selling seo, so its the same job basically.
Once you're up and running you'd seo it like normal. When its generating traffic you would need to sign up with someones affiliate program to sell the leads. This is all going to be automated once put in place. i.e. the leads instantly go to the company in question, then your affiliate account would be credited for that lead. You don't need to do anything further. If you didn't get out of bed till 11am today you might wake up to find a handful of £50 leads already processed and in your account.
If you run this debt management site for a year you might spend say 5 hours and £500 on the design. £50 and 1 hour on the hosting. £200 and 3 hours on the content. 5 hours and no money on setting up process to sell the generated leads. Then 500 hours and £30,000 on the SEO. The other bits are just the little extras you do... the seo is the real job.
Anyone who can genuinely put out good work as an seo would need to be a fool to follow any other business model than the above. How could you possibly justify scratching around with £300 a month clients trying to rank for "buy inkjet refills online" or "plumber in Bolton" etc.
You're not making the world a better place with either of them, but at least you're making yourself a big sack of money with the way I've described
Stevanos said:
And when the affiliate deal is closed you have no business left. Ok whilst it lasts but not concrete.
The affiliate deal will never close though, unless the law removes specific products like self cert mortgages, or the industry was a short term one from the start (PPI can't run forever). So its just like a redundancy or a job change... yet likely with far far more notice period. And the ability to work on replacement income streams before the other one died.Its still impossible, from a financial perspective, to justify an seo taking on £300 a month low rent clients. Unless of course you're willing to admit thats the maximum level you're capable of operating at.
Stevanos said:
What a load of utter crap!!!!
SEO is just one marketing skill in the toolbox, building a website is another and building a business is a much bigger proposition. Why should someone good at a given skill build a business arbitrarily and possibly not knowing all the other skills and knowledge to run a business just because they have one skill?
Agreed. SEO is just one marketing skill in the toolbox, building a website is another and building a business is a much bigger proposition. Why should someone good at a given skill build a business arbitrarily and possibly not knowing all the other skills and knowledge to run a business just because they have one skill?
KFC said:
So how does that fit in with my debt lead gen post above... why aren't these seo guys using their super skills to rank sites like that and make some serious money?
I really can't come up with any other reason than "because I can't actually do it"
Perhaps some don't want to run a business and deal with all the stress that goes with it.I really can't come up with any other reason than "because I can't actually do it"
Also, perhaps some SEO types don't buy in to this affiliate marketing stuff, or perhaps don't want to be reliant on "commision" when they are looking to get their mortgage!
For others, it could be that they like working in an agency and the benefits that brings (learning, team work, fun, banter, the technical challenges, being in a REAL business environment) etc etc.
You're really clutching at straws here
Having "banter" in your 9-5 job.... if you believe someone who is telling you thats the reason they work for £20-40k a year rather than £40k a month from home for themselves then I've got some magic beans to sell you
Your work environment is what you make it. Personally I prefer to work from home, alone. And then go out and do whatever I want, when I want it.
The guys I work with are scattered about, I don't see some of them for weeks or months. If i preferred working in an office environment I could do it. Hire an office locally and tell everyone they're working from there from next month, and replace anyone who said no. If you're bored working from home, get some new hobbies to break up the day.
You could justify "banter" and "team work" as a reason to turn down a 20% pay increase. You couldn't use it to legitimately turn down a 5000% increase
Stevanos said:
Perhaps some don't want to run a business and deal with all the stress that goes with it.
This point is one you should use if you have my business model, not one you'd use against it. There is no stress... I don't need to have client meetings. I don't need to sign up new clients. I don't need to travel to pitch for things that I may not win etc. You seem to be ignoring the fact it'll take a day roughly to set up an affiliate site. Then its just back to working seo as normal. But for far more money (assuming you can do it well)Stevanos said:
Also, perhaps some SEO types don't buy in to this affiliate marketing stuff, or perhaps don't want to be reliant on "commision" when they are looking to get their mortgage!
So not willing to put their money where their mouth is... aka someone who's hopeless at the job. I see. Stevanos said:
For others, it could be that they like working in an agency and the benefits that brings (learning, team work, fun, banter, the technical challenges, being in a REAL business environment) etc etc.
Learning is a good reason to work for an agency. I said that in an earlier post. But once you've learned what you're doing... you're better on your own. Having "banter" in your 9-5 job.... if you believe someone who is telling you thats the reason they work for £20-40k a year rather than £40k a month from home for themselves then I've got some magic beans to sell you
Your work environment is what you make it. Personally I prefer to work from home, alone. And then go out and do whatever I want, when I want it.
The guys I work with are scattered about, I don't see some of them for weeks or months. If i preferred working in an office environment I could do it. Hire an office locally and tell everyone they're working from there from next month, and replace anyone who said no. If you're bored working from home, get some new hobbies to break up the day.
You could justify "banter" and "team work" as a reason to turn down a 20% pay increase. You couldn't use it to legitimately turn down a 5000% increase
KFC said:
Learning is a good reason to work for an agency. I said that in an earlier post. But once you've learned what you're doing... you're better on your own.
Having "banter" in your 9-5 job.... if you believe someone who is telling you thats the reason they work for £20-40k a year rather than £40k a month from home for themselves then I've got some magic beans to sell you
Your work environment is what you make it. Personally I prefer to work from home, alone. And then go out and do whatever I want, when I want it.
The guys I work with are scattered about, I don't see some of them for weeks or months. If i preferred working in an office environment I could do it. Hire an office locally and tell everyone they're working from there from next month, and replace anyone who said no. If you're bored working from home, get some new hobbies to break up the day.
You could justify "banter" and "team work" as a reason to turn down a 20% pay increase. You couldn't use it to legitimately turn down a 5000% increase
You and I really won't probably fully agree, I respect that money can be made, real money but for me it is not really a business and you are not fixing a problem for users or offering anything innovative, rather just being parasitic off other people's real brands. I have no interest in setting up being a middle man, beholden to some affiliate network as they come and go so often. As SEOs we also know that "affiliate" sites are in Google's crosshairs. Having "banter" in your 9-5 job.... if you believe someone who is telling you thats the reason they work for £20-40k a year rather than £40k a month from home for themselves then I've got some magic beans to sell you
Your work environment is what you make it. Personally I prefer to work from home, alone. And then go out and do whatever I want, when I want it.
The guys I work with are scattered about, I don't see some of them for weeks or months. If i preferred working in an office environment I could do it. Hire an office locally and tell everyone they're working from there from next month, and replace anyone who said no. If you're bored working from home, get some new hobbies to break up the day.
You could justify "banter" and "team work" as a reason to turn down a 20% pay increase. You couldn't use it to legitimately turn down a 5000% increase
I have worked in SEO as freelance, agency-side and most recently for a $50 Million funded start-up as the senior SEO in the business. Whilst agency-side we had a load of sniveling affiliate site owners come to us when Google slapped their affiliate sites down with that algorithm update, when I looked at these sites the majority of them had no added benefit for the user above the site they were linking to, why would Google be interested in ranking them? They are not, unless you really go to town on building a proper product. I'm interested in helping real businesses with their SEO and of course I want to get rich but I have bills to pay and other people who rely on me. So I agree that money can be made from affiliate sites, but for you to say only good SEO folk are doing stuff for themselves is pig ignorant I am afraid, I know some great SEOs in all sorts of different positions whether freelance, agency-side or client side and many of them love what they do and are very happy, they are also top notch at their game!
I think you should accept that people work in different working environments for their own reasons and not be too quick to snub their skills.
May I ask how quickly a site would start generating real revenue, let's say £3K per month before tax assuming we had a s
t-hot SEO on the job and we are not using churn and burn SEO tactics?We work in financial services lead gen. Almost entirely in house, a mixture of email, seo, ppc, social and content.
Our largest clients are well thought of, national, financial advisors spending 6 figures a month on targeted leads.
Painting a picture of lead gen being simple is disingenuous. If you're the one supplying the customer directly, the net CPA can be vastly higher than the gross PPC figures might suggest.
Put on top the effort required to align the lead and the consumer journey with what the client wants and you have a complex service rather than a simple commodity supply.
Yes, there will be fast bucks to make for sole traders and small guys to fund a Ferrari lifestyle from the latest less gen fad, no doubt about it. Scaling this into a sustainable business allowing for long term relationships with blue chip clients is another matter, though.
Certainly room for both.
Our largest clients are well thought of, national, financial advisors spending 6 figures a month on targeted leads.
Painting a picture of lead gen being simple is disingenuous. If you're the one supplying the customer directly, the net CPA can be vastly higher than the gross PPC figures might suggest.
Put on top the effort required to align the lead and the consumer journey with what the client wants and you have a complex service rather than a simple commodity supply.
Yes, there will be fast bucks to make for sole traders and small guys to fund a Ferrari lifestyle from the latest less gen fad, no doubt about it. Scaling this into a sustainable business allowing for long term relationships with blue chip clients is another matter, though.
Certainly room for both.
Stevanos said:
You and I really won't probably fully agree, I respect that money can be made, real money but for me it is not really a business and you are not fixing a problem for users or offering anything innovative, rather just being parasitic off other people's real brands.
What problem are you fixing or what are you offering users if you rank Bobs Plumbing for "hire a plumber London" ? Search is often a zero sum game... there are 10 results on the page and to put Bobs Plumbing in there Steves Plumbing had to drop out. You've created nothing of value in the process, other than line Bobs pockets.If you're just going to shuffle s
tty google results around and do nothing whatsoever innovative, then you may as well get paid generously for it. I can at least admit we're doing basically nothing of value... I suspect most of these nickel and dime seo agencies won't. Stevanos said:
Whilst agency-side we had a load of sniveling affiliate site owners come to us when Google slapped their affiliate sites down with that algorithm update, when I looked at these sites the majority of them had no added benefit for the user above the site they were linking to, why would Google be interested in ranking them? They are not, unless you really go to town on building a proper product.
Yeah I see things like this all the time. stty little affiliate site owners often too greedy to understand that if the agency they're talking to had the skills to rank their site they'd be doing it themselves. They think they can just outsource their seo, provide nothing of value and have a big payday in return. Surprise surprise, it doesn't work out that way. And its usually only the low quality agency that makes anything from the deal Stevanos said:
I'm interested in helping real businesses with their SEO and of course I want to get rich but I have bills to pay and other people who rely on me. So I agree that money can be made from affiliate sites, but for you to say only good SEO folk are doing stuff for themselves is pig ignorant I am afraid, I know some great SEOs in all sorts of different positions whether freelance, agency-side or client side and many of them love what they do and are very happy, they are also top notch at their game!
Again you're completely ignoring the fact that search is often a zero sum game... you're not creating new business you're just re-allocating it. That person was already searching for "buy iPhone" and they were going to spend that money regardless. In human terms, an average SEO has less real life value add than a bin man or a school dinner lady. I'm completely comfortable with that... as above I have no qualms about being paid just for a shuffling of the search results. I think these top of the game guys you're referring to, aren't anywhere near as good as you think they are. Get them to try a payday loan or a debt management site and I bet they fail miserably. The big money niches will separate the men from the boys
Stevanos said:
I think you should accept that people work in different working environments for their own reasons and not be too quick to snub their skills.
And I think you should accept that 99.99% of the workforce will sell their soul for a 100x pay rise, if they could do the job. "I just don't want to do that" is a poor excuse, for not being able to do it. Moreso when you look at it from the point of view if I shuffle the payday loan results, and you shuffle the Bolton plumbers results, we both achieved fk all in value add. The only difference is I spent half the working week doing dog rescue work (my unpaid job that I actually enjoy doing), and then drove home in my Lamborghini. the other seo spent 45 hours doing equally nothing value add wise, then took the bus home 
Stevanos said:
May I ask how quickly a site would start generating real revenue, let's say £3K per month before tax assuming we had a st-hot SEO on the job and we are not using churn and burn SEO tactics?
It would be massively dependant on niche choice, budget available, attitude to risk of penalty etc. Assume you're starting with a reasonable budget, and a moderate risk profile, you should be looking to be making a few thousand a month within 6-12 months. t-hot SEO on the job and we are not using churn and burn SEO tactics?allergictocheese said:
Yes, there will be fast bucks to make for sole traders and small guys to fund a Ferrari lifestyle from the latest less gen fad, no doubt about it. Scaling this into a sustainable business allowing for long term relationships with blue chip clients is another matter, though.
I'm not sure why you think someone like me would care about long term relationships for blue chip clients though. I have a sustainable business - for years and years I've been seo'ing whatever is paying well this year, and selling the leads to whoever wants to buy them. Nothing is going to change there. If a farmer grows a different crop every year, he still has a sustainable business surely?jammy_basturd said:
KFC, do you have any examples of affliate lead gen. sites that don't involve getting involved in the murky world of pay day loans and the like but still bring in the sort of money you've been showing?
Credit card applications. Mobile phone contracts. Car loans. Lease deals for cars. Selling leads to estate agents. There are going to be loads of them. Look at any topic where a lot of money is changing hands (in total, rather than per transaction) and the chances are there could be a money making opportunity for an affiliate.
Really? I can't imagine there is big money in car insurance, flights, airport parking, airport transfers, etc that you'd get commission even into double figures.
FWIW I think you're right, in one way. Those 'SEO Experts' scrambling for £300 a month clients generally (nearly always) aren't very good, that's why they're feeding off the bottom of the market. They wouldn't do very well out of affiliate lead gen. either!
Then there are quite a few people that are good enough to earn a living from lead gen. but aren't entrepreneurial enough to want to go it alone. Many, many people are happy to earn fortunes for other people just along as they are guaranteed a salary at the end of the month and some time off every now and then.
FWIW I think you're right, in one way. Those 'SEO Experts' scrambling for £300 a month clients generally (nearly always) aren't very good, that's why they're feeding off the bottom of the market. They wouldn't do very well out of affiliate lead gen. either!
Then there are quite a few people that are good enough to earn a living from lead gen. but aren't entrepreneurial enough to want to go it alone. Many, many people are happy to earn fortunes for other people just along as they are guaranteed a salary at the end of the month and some time off every now and then.
Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff