Leasing websites instead of selling web design? [Not related to rank & rent]

I do this, but do monthly maintenance on the site as well. I had one client stop paying and cancel, so I inserted a new logo and contact info for another client.
It's nice, but you put a lot of work upfront.

Yes, I currently am doing this within a few different markets.

I just rented out a website to an attorney for $800/mo. He gets all the leads the site generates.

It's a fantastic model and if you know how to rank websites, can be very lucrative. The biggest problem I see in most is the "shiny object" syndrome. You don't start ranking websites immediately typically, so you get "bored" with the thought of it and move onto to a tactic that might yield faster results.

If you stay the course, you'll have a ton of high ranking websites you can rent out for years... creating an arsenal of evergreen websites to rent!

I love the model, as it really is like buying property and renting it out - the best part is the investment is only a fraction the cost of what it would actually take to buy a property and start to see a return on it.

Thanks for the replies guys. There has been some focus around the rank + rent model which I would like to specifically avoid.

I am very much familiar with the process of ranking a website and then leasing it out on a monthly basis as a lead generating service. I have worked with a few dentists in the past and had some good results. The model itself is great, however I do not feel it is sustainable for the long term.

As I mentioned in the title of this thread, I do want to explicitly avoid the rank and rent model. It is indeed lucrative and it can indeed make money. However, from my experience - relying on organic traffic (SEO) is not a solid business plan. Algorithm updates keep coming out and it seems inevitable to get hit eventually. Maybe not this update or the next, but the one after that - yes, you might get hit then.

I feel that if I could rent out a website without charging an upfront cost for website design - the long term value is greater. And with this, I do not need to worry about ranking websites and then subsequently having them booted down the SERPs by Google. $200/month is a lot less than $800/month, sure - but the $800 a month income requires you to try and be in control of something that you ultimately have very little control over. The $200/month income however is for providing a service that you do have full control over.

Maybe I have made my decision to avoid the rank + rent model too hastily. I only ever had around 4 or 5 clients and was at around $1,500/month total at that point. However, one of the algorithm updates came out and all of my sites got penalised. Not by a lot, but enough to decrease the amount of callers significantly. At that point I realised the model was not something I have enough control over to continue with. I felt bad losing out on 5 clients, but imagine I had 50 clients?

Is anyone explicitly providing website design and related/associated services to business owners on a monthly ongoing rate? I am wondering if anyone is doing something like this without the rank and rent leads approach that I have alluded to above.

I am also open to hear everyones opinion on why they think my not wanting to rely on Google for SEO related income could be a bad idea. Am I missing something? I personally feel I am doing the right thing, in terms of long term stable income.

Voasi, I do agree with most things you've outlined. One thing I wanted to bring to your attention is where you said at $200/month you only have enough to maintain SEO rankings. This is correct - but again, I am thinking about a model that does not rely on SEO.

The $200/month would be paid for in exchange for a website design service, hosting, backups, plugin/software updates and on going changes to the website as per clients request. There would be no SEO included; other than the initial on-page SEO.

I would not bother trying to rent out a site for only $200/month if I had to also spend good money on quality SEO work - so with that, I do agree with you.

Again, I have done the rent a site model. While I did not have dynamic numbers depending on which channel the visitor came from; I was still fairly creative with my approach. While most people were struggling on how to track leads - I had already implemented solutions to log calls, record calls etc. I love the idea behind the site rental model, I really do. And I would love for my past experience with it to have worked.

Given the uncertainties with ranking websites on Google, I am still not convinced even if you do things the 'right' way that you will be safe.

I would feel much more comfortable setting up lead gen. sites and sending paid traffic to them. And if I could manage to lease out the sites / sell leads at a profit - then that is a model I would certainly be keen on. Especially so because if you agree on a fixed price per lead, you can just keep increasing the amount of paid traffic you send to the website for as long as you maintain a good ROI.

However, I will hold to my opinion that relying on SEO is not a good idea. If I had a system down pat with paid traffic then sure, supplementing with SEO would be a clever move. But only if you could make it work without SEO - that is, have it be profitable for you and your client by using paid traffic alone.

The SEO tactics I used earlier on when I was doing the rank and rent model were, by todays standards, not acceptable. However, back then - if you were not doing what I was doing, then you would be left far, far behind. You had to follow the trend, or else your website would not rank in the #1 or #2 spot. But by following that trend, I ultimately got my sites penalised.

I feel today people are wiser when it comes to ranking websites, but you can never know if what you're doing today will be unacceptable tomorrow.

Voasi, do you have anything you could perhaps discuss regarding paid traffic? I would love to hear if you are able to get a good amount of leads and at a good ROI by using paid traffic.