Offering SEO - advice on starting up

[Thojon]

Hi guys,

I have been working in SEO for about a year and have been trained by some amazing gurus & worked on their websites, with good results too.

I am looking to earn from home as well as I am only part time and was wondering if anyone had any tips on offering SEO services.

I sit at work and receive spammy emails about people offering 'amazing services' etc and I don't want to be another 'email in the junkmail'. Cold calling is also out of the question until I finish my portfolio!

I have tried offering cheap services to get my home portfolio going but have had little response from this as well!

Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Thomas

[thomaspaylor]

Hi Thomas, try the "Warriors for hire" section of this forum and post your services in there. Offer a few cut price review copies to Warriors and build up some good feedback. People on this forum are crying out for good SEO out-sourcers and if your up to the job you shouldn't have much trouble getting work.

I for one would be very interested if you PM's me some details about projects you have worked on and keywords you have ranked in the past.

Good luck with it all.

Tom

[Victoria Gates]

Good luck! Always stay genuine and honest, it's almost too easy to get desperate some days and want to use not so good methods.

[FanFollow]

Use twitter to advertise.

Also, how much do you charge for this service. I'm interested.

[VladWorks]

Why not find some niche SEO keywords and do SEO on it. This way your clients will find you with your keywords and you have proof your methods work.

Thats how I went from a webmaster for someone else to SEO company owner with many employees.

Proof is always in the pudding! And in our case also an easy way to get clients!

[MattAdamo]

If i was going to start up a SEO company, i would definitely make sure my name was well known before i jumped into it.

You know how some members on this forum are known for certain things... seo, copywriting, whatever it may be. I would make yourself one of those people. Anytime you see a new thread with someone asking a question on SEO, jump on it and make sure to over deliver with your content. This will build trust and authority within this sub community (the warrior forum.)

Then i would open up a warriors for hire thread or WSO, and give an outrageous discount/over deliver again.

Put a link in your profile so after people read your awesome content delivered thread the trust will be built and you will see a MUCH higher conversion rate.

Once you've mastered the warrior forum, theres about 5 other MAJOR affiliate marketing/seo forums out there.

Your options are endless. This is just basic forum marketing, but so many people have absolutely no idea what there doing/ or understand that you need to help people/deliver great content for free before you can really make the big bucks.

This is how i would probably start it. Then i would make a website and try and rank for keywords like "SEO + where you live" etc. to get the small business's with you.

The sky is the limit.

-Matt

[Tedel]

If you get someone to request you a quote, he will want some proof of your work too. Make sure you have something to show.

[esdavis]

Here's another idea, along with a possible income sideline until you build up your business.

Consider lead generation. Choose a niche, do some keyword and competition analysis, and then build out a domain or three for lead generation purposes. Use your SEO mojo and get them ranking - and you can use that for your portfolio.

Then, sell the leads you generate to businesses in that area, or lease out the site for a monthly fee. You own the site, so if the lessee goes away, lease the leads to someone else, sell them per lead to someone, or sell them to a third-party leads broker.