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Quit my 9-5, 2 Months later and 6 new SEO Clients - I need a VA please HELP!!

by sebski22
18 replies
Hi Guys,

So firstly I should start by saying that this forum as changed my life. I have spent years lurking around, researching and plucking up the courage to begin my own Online Marketing Business.

Well two months ago I took the plunge and things are going great!!

I now have 6 SEO clients on my books and have easily covered the costs of my old 9-5 job. I could not be happier. The problem I am facing is that I want to outsource all the SEO work in one place.

At the moment I am paying for a monthly link package for each of the sites from a supplier here on the WF. I am also outsourcing content creation and distribution. In addition I am buying in various link packages to help boost specific sites when they are needed. I seem to be having reasonable success however keeping track of everything and being completely confident in my service is proving hard. Everything feels a bit "Bitty" if you know what I mean.

I use Traffic Travis for KW research and reporting, I have a reasonable understanding of SEO which seems to be doing the job but I feel I would be far more confident if I could outsource the job lot to an SEO VA and leave me to concentrate on getting more clients...which I seem to be pretty good at.

In essence I guess what I am saying is that I am a better Salesman than SEO so I would love to take on a Pro SEO to be 100% sure everything is being carried out correctly and to the highest standard possible.

Can any of you guys suggest any excellent VA's that will not blow my budget out of the water? My current outsourcing costs for Link Building, Article Writing and Distribution are around £400 per month. (thats roughly $600).

I have placed a request on Guru.com for a VA and received a ton of replies, prices seem to be around what I expected, most are from india so my main concern is quality. The piece of mind I have from using services on the WF are that there are always a ton of reviews, and we all know Social Proof is king. I am worried that moving my business away from WF will result in poor performance.

I know from experience that outsources can easily let you down, it has taken me 6 years to find a decent writer (God Praise Natasha Nixon here on WF) and relying on them with my whole client base is a big risk.

Any advice would be awesome, I have had so much from the forum to get me to this point that I feel this would be the perfect place to get help now I have made the jump.

I am really looking forward to your responses,

Seb
#assistant #find #seo #virtual
  • Profile picture of the author Carl Fridsjö
    Congratulations, good job. For the outsourcing part you can always check odesk/elance for people with many hours and good fedback. We also have the warriors for hire section.

    Or if you're interested I can connect you with a sub-contractor company that seems very reliable and high quality, however I have not had the chance to try them out yet. PM if you want to.
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    • Profile picture of the author sebski22
      Originally Posted by Carl Fridsjö View Post

      Congratulations, good job. For the outsourcing part you can always check odesk/elance for people with many hours and good fedback. We also have the warriors for hire section.

      Or if you're interested I can connect you with a sub-contractor company that seems very reliable and high quality, however I have not had the chance to try them out yet. PM if you want to.
      Thanks for the response Carl.

      I am trawling the Freelance sites as we speak looking for reliable sources. I'm just a little concerned because I have not had much luck in the past with outsourcing.

      I will drop you a PM with regards your Sub-Contractor as I am always interested in recommedations.

      Thanks Buddy
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      • Profile picture of the author loudsilence
        Instead of going the VA route, you could go with one of the big firms for the white label solution.

        I can suggest EndlessRise or Hubshout (who are both on this board) but there are others as well.

        Going this route will eat into your profit margins but the tools and white label dashboard should help you close more deals and retain more customers so maybe it would balance out.

        Can I ask you what your first steps were and how you landed your initial 6 clients?

        Continued success!
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        • Profile picture of the author viralmarketing
          Originally Posted by loudsilence View Post

          Can I ask you what your first steps were and how you landed your initial 6 clients?

          Im interested in this as well
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  • Profile picture of the author Colm Whelan
    I have recently hired a VA via a third party in the Phillipines. I can recommend highly my contact over there if you're looking to hire. PM me if you need his details.
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    • Profile picture of the author viralmarketing
      You might want to try john jonas's "replacemyself dot com", i havent used them but i know a successful marketing where i live that started using them a couple of years ago and has built a good quality team.
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      • Profile picture of the author John Jonas Phil VA
        Originally Posted by viralmarketing View Post

        You might want to try john jonas's "replacemyself dot com", i havent used them but i know a successful marketing where i live that started using them a couple of years ago and has built a good quality team.
        You'll need a team especially if you want to expand your business. and with replacemyself, you don't have to worry about training and it works with any management structure. Try watching their free webinar to see if this can help solve your problems.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Williamson
    Congratulations, needing to expand and hire new help is a good problem to have, aside from all the stress and frustration.

    I hire contractors on oDesk all the time and have for years. I would suggest oDesk as a means of hiring the work you want done. Find someone with a proven track record (work history and good feedback/reviews) of proving quality SEO services and see if you can hire the same person for multiple linkbuilding tasks. If you want me to dig up the contact info for some of my old contractors, let me know.
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  • Profile picture of the author mrfinnj
    congrads man, thats an inspiring read!
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  • Profile picture of the author TJ Kazunga
    I have had good results with these guys previously - SEO Services for High Ranking Search Engine Optimization

    Also, search the WSO and Warriors for Hire forums - you can find some good providers just make sure you test and do your own due diligence!
    Good luck
    TJ
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    • Profile picture of the author sebski22
      Hi Guys,

      Thank you all for your responses. I knew I could count on you for some inspiration. I'm going to look into all of your suggestions.

      As for how I got my 1st 6 clients:

      My 1st Client was a Friend who runs a national business. He had been let down by a couple of SEO providers and suggested I give it a try with his site as I had some previous success with my own sites.

      It all went well and his site is now a clear market leader, suffice to say he is very happy and tells everyone about me. As a result of his contacts I now work with a Web Designer and PR company both of which have provided a client each. That takes us to 3.

      The other 3 are a result of Cold Calling, Cold Emails and Offering free work to illustrate what I can do. I work on the "Law of Reciprocity" I don't try to sell anything I just give potential clients a free boost, make sure they know I am decent guy, make sure they know I have given them results then leave the conversation to naturally move on to how they can get further benefits.

      I have found that I close around 1 in 10 of all the free work I carry out and I need to contact around 50 people just to get in touch with someone to give out a free trial.

      It is difficult out there as everyone is conscious of a catch and questioning my motives but it seems to be working slowly. My new approach is Linkedin, I'm going to try and build some credibility there and hope for some referrals.


      My main problem is that I am consistently under pricing my services. My average client is paying me £300 per month. I need to move that up to around £600 I think if I am going to be outsourcing SEO as I will not have any profit otherwise.

      Also I am not placing clients in a contract, just working Month to Month. This seemed fine to start with but I hate the feeling that I might lose one at the end of each month. I think I may change my pricing level to 3month, 6 month and 12 month packages to give me extra security.

      Hope this helps some of you out and thanks for all the responses

      Seb
      I
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  • Profile picture of the author kylemarvin
    Congrats on the success of the hardest part: Getting clients. I would agree to use Odesk to get a VA, but make sure you trust them and don't give them too much liberty to do SEO tasks. I've had a negative experience when trusting someone from Odesk with being an SEO expert. Don't let them make decisions, just give them instructions. Be very clear to them.

    There's 2 kinds of people to outsource this work to, the big picture expert and the laborer. The big picture experts are people who know SEO as good as you if not better, and won't do anything to screw you on a Penguin type update, but they cost more. The laborer is who you outsource to when you are the big picture expert and you have specific tasks to be done that you give them. They don't have to be SEO experts to use them, but you need to know obviously what tasks to give them.

    What I'm doing lately is using services in WF, which are more big picture SEO experts and they are trustworthy. Just make sure to read through their threads and look for red flags, I also only use services that have a proven track record, before and after Panda & Penguin.

    Good luck and congrats again!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mekanism
    My method is to select VAs who really need the work, and give them clear training and instructions to follow so that I dont have to rely on their knowledge.
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  • Profile picture of the author imsolutionsgroup
    If you want a VA inside the US - AlloyVA.com
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    • Profile picture of the author sebski22
      Hi Mekanism, you raise a great point:

      I really like the idea of getting an SEO system in place then training a VA to carry out tasks I have specified. I have read the E-Myth and like the idea that a business should be built on systems and not people in order to prevent me becoming dependant on any individual person.

      I guess the real issue I have is that I am not sure how to develop a fully fledged SEO system that will yield great results for every client...Is that even possible? I assume that every website is unique and therefore needs different systems...step in my fully fledged SEO expert.

      If anyone has an SEO blueprint they would care to share I would love to read it.

      My basic system is to produce 2/3 good quality articles, upload them to the main customer site and bookmark, after a couple of days I distribute the article using AMR and bookmark the approved links.

      I then employ a linkbuilding service who carry out Blog Commenting, Social Profiles, Bookmarking etc.


      When a site seems stuck I run a Warriors For Hire SEO pack with good reviews in the hope to kick start things.

      Overall this little system is getting some good boosts in SERPs for my clients however I feel that I could be missing out on big chunks of detail such as the sites overalll Link Profile, HighPR relevant Links etc.

      Again any experts please feel free to drop in on this, I sure there are a lot of us out here who would appreciate your thoughts.
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  • Profile picture of the author mrtrance
    What sort of monthly fees are you charging among your 6 clients? You say our outsource fees are roughly $600 per month so much profit are you making from these 6 clients? How did you figure out how much to charge for each client since I'm assuming it's not one price fits all.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ericparke
    Another good place for outsourcing is guru.com. Trust this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author ausdeals
    One of the hardest and most time consuming things is to find an SEO worth their cost. 99.99% are not, especially the really cheap ones. Let me know if you find a good one though.
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