Advice On Job Offer Or Build My Own Company

Its depend on you. Firstly, Analyze your skills. If you have business mind, you may go for business otherwise job.

Learn the tricks of seo from the new company and then try and implement the same in real life.
Reading courses and actually doing SEO are two different things altogether.

Work with the company for atleast a year and during your free time, implement things learnt on your sites etc. If things don't work out, u can always go back to selling cars coz u have a lot of experience in it already.

All the best in whatever u do!!

If you're serious about starting an SEO business, take the job and learn the entire business from the ground up.

I've been doing SEO for over 10 years, I learned everything on my own. I'm good at research and know a few different code languages. I would have jumped at the chance when first starting out to look over someones shoulder at their expense ($).

Kind of confusing why someone that can make $100K selling cars would have a car payment.

You could always sell a couple cars per month to subsidize the lower pay If needed.

[edit]
Just noticed the thread is a couple months old.

So why even muck around with SEO ?
It will take a long time to reach those lofty goals with SEO or AM, if ever.....

Take the job and stay there for at least
2 years. Also realise that you might get
a raise / bonuses if you work hard.

You'll learn a lot (Things which could
take you 10 years to find out if you work
for yourself) and will greatly accelerate
your chances of success.

In your spare time start a website
about what you learnt selling cars i.e. Joe's
tips for car salesmen.

This will give you a chance to practice your
SEO / marketing skills and could be montetized
down the line i.e. when you quit the SEO job.

Think about it from your potential clients' point of view.

Which inspires more confidence?

"Before going out on my own, I spent time with SEOCorp, one of the leading SEO agencies with Fortune 500 clients around the world."

Or

"I've spent hours and hours reading about SEO while selling cars, which I'm really good at. I've never actually done SEO for anybody, but I've read a lot."

If you were going to hire an agency to do SEO for the business that fed your family, who would you call first?

It's very simple FOLLOW YOUR GUT do what you love to do.

If you are still relatively young (20's, 30's, maybe 40's) and this is what really interests you, then it may be best to go for it despite the pay cut. What I would recommend doing, however, is ask your employer if you can have a leave of absence with a right to return, such as one or two years, rather than just resign without asking for that. If you can really do that well or already are with selling cars, then it sounds like maybe your employer really values you and might grant that. Then again, if you can do that well I suppose perhaps you could sell cars anywhere, although there are certainly no guarantees, so be careful about assuming you could just go back to making $100k+ from that any time you feel like it.

If you are in your 50's or up, however, I would probably recommend sticking to your current gig and working on the other interest after hours on the side.

I think the SEO route will be better for your career and business in the long run.

Sell cars on the weekends for if it's really making you that much money.

Hi:

The answer to your question depends on a lot of factors.
If you are living at home and have minimal expenses then you should seriously consider taking the SEO job if that's what you really want.

If you have a family and lots of expenses then it might not be practical to switch and live off $36,000 gross per year. Your take home will be about $25,000 after all the taxes. Could you live on that salary?

What are you passionate about? Selling cars or SEO?

You could always sell cars and dabble in SEO at night and on the weekend until you build up enough clients to go full time.

Best of luck,

Dan

I'll play devils advocate here since most people are encouraging you to take the job.

Doing SEO isn't some secret science that only a few people know how to do. You can pay a whole team in india to handle your SEO for a fraction of the cost people pay over here. Hell you probably know enough about SEO to do it yourself right now.

The point is. SEO as a whole is pretty straightforward. You might learn a couple new tricks working at that business, but this isn't going to be some kind of apprenticeship working for some master craftsman teaching you how to perfect your craft over 4 years.

They will most likely have you do data research, look for keywords and backlinks, maybe even write articles. And then you will find out that the reason their SEO results are so good is because they have a network of people they pay to backlink from places like wikipedia, news sites, etc.

Then you will realize that there is no secret to SEO. The winning conditions for SEO are no different than any other business, who ever has the deeper pockets usually wins.

So after you learn this out for yourself you decide you want to still open your own SEO business..

But guess what. You are a nobody. and you are now competing with people like your former employers.

You can claim to be an SEO master, but you are another voice in thousands of other SEO companies out there fighting for table scraps.

The SEO niche is highly competitive and unless you know some people that can get you in the door at bigger companies, you will be fighting over $500-$1000 clients with all the companies overseas who can afford to pay 10x more people than you to do 10x more work.

You would need some kind of hook or unique selling point that would set you apart. And if your only selling point is you worked for some big SEO agency... well why would they choose you over the agency you worked for?

So it's important that you look beyond the present and see if what you are doing is actual viable and worth it. Not to mention what you learn today in SEO might not be viable 5 years from now since google and the other search engines control your destiny. That's a scary place to be and there are people out there who can tell you how foolish it was to build a business around google who have now lost it all.

What you could do is take the job and then create your own SEO product to sell to these people "I worked for fortune 500 SEO agency, here's all the dirty little secrets they used to rank their websites to #1 on google..."

You could carve yourself out a little niche more easily going with that approach. And then if you still want to create an agency, you will have a user base built up to start from.

Good luck

He's gotten some good advice on both sides - unfortunately has not logged in since Nov 11 - so doubt he's reading any of it. I don't understand why people ask for opinions and don't hang around long enough to read the advice other members take the time to post.

Forget the OP. The following is for anyone else facing a similar decision and maybe using the search function or Google...

My advice wasn't based on the OP learning some kind of secret voodoo SEO black magic. As you pointed out, basic SEO isn't rocket science. It's applying a fairly basic set of rules on a consistent basis. The witch doctors don't usually last.

It was based on what I saw in the real world when a business considered an outside agency. Many successful agencies were founded by people who 'outgrew' working with a big agency and went out on their own.

Working for a big agency may not teach you much about technical SEO, but it will expose you to the systems they use for managing clients, making proposals, closing sales, etc. It also could provide networking opportunities.

So I have been getting a few email alerts for replies to this post. I guess other people may be in the same shoes as I was and/or people are interested in the best answer to this question.

I emailed several knows "gurus" and "authorities" in the digital marketing game.

They said to keep selling cars and making money, work on SEO projects and getting clients in my off time. And once I cant handle the work load and am making a full time income from SEO/consulting to quit my car sales job.

I was homeless and living out of my car when I made the OP.

I had moved over 1,000 miles away from my small home town to a bigger city and had a tough first year.

At the time of the OP I had just gotten started selling cars in my new found bigger city (living out of my car idling it at night to keep warm) and ended up getting a couple of job offers from companies I had applied for earlier.

I stayed at the car sales gig.

Earned 10K last month which was my first month in their internet department.


My plan is to basically rank a few sites. Niche down in a business niche, and pitch full package online marketing for said business in that niche.

Hi, freeman323!
Wow, you're doing pretty good, but, what exactly do you want in your life?

It is not an easy decision to make.

You see, us, the IM crowd, tend to develop some single minded habits. We rarely go out, we don't play nice with others as most of the work is done at an individual level and we tend to become very focused on procedures and ignore the bigger picture.

When you work in a company, you will develop these skills too. You'll discover that just because you can organize people VIA Skype, this doesn't mean you can do it just as well in real life. I know because I've been there.

So working among people is always a good thing - because it helps you develop. Plus, you can make new connections, meet new people and gain a new perspective on things.

However, is this worth $64.000?

I'm going to assume that you're different and saying that you can achieve $100.000/year means that you are actually earning this sum, not that this your potential. I'm going to assume that this is your ACTUAL income. If this is the case, then you're going to take a $64.000 loss.

$64.000 can cover the education you'll get there ... networking sessions ... a nice co-working space where you can work with other like minded people and a lot more. $34.000 is a very small yearly income and while in some parts of the world is acceptable, in most developed countries it is not.

So if I were you, I'd continue with the $100.000/year and just invest $32.000 (50% of the potential loss) into training your skills, networking and working among people, not just computer windows. But if you're broke and you have no income, I'd take the job. $34.000 in income that actually comes is better than $100.000 in income that could be.

Take the job and consider it an apprenticeship. Stick it out for at least a year. You'll learn more from observing things first hand than you will from trying to educate yourself. More importantly, you'll meet people and make connections you'll be able to draw on later.

This is exactly right. And it goes for just about any type of freelancer or independent consultant.

The top agencies are almost never started from scratch. The people who start them already have a pre-existing pool of clients. And they get these clients by working for someone else for a time, building up a reputation and then taking these clients with them when they decide to strike out on their own. They're then able to build upon this pre-existing base by word of mouth recommendations -- recommendations they get from their pre-existing networks -- and by other means.

This isn't to say that you can't start a successful agency from scratch -- it just depends on what your definition of successful is. Are you going to be content hustling for clients in places like the WF or trying to make a few hundred dollars here or there from (usually tight-fisted) small businesses? Or maybe you already have networks you can draw upon, such as a rich aunt who's willing to give you a juicy contract for the company she owns because she wants to help you succeed. In those cases, you probably don't need to work for anyone else first.

But for most successful agencies, their networks are their number one assets. And the best way for most of us to build up networks with the most desirable clients is to work for someone else so that we have access to their networks and their clients.

It's alway better to start your online business on the side. Some may reason that under pressure they will be forced to succeed. Pressure is one thing but desperation does not allow one to think clearly. It doesn't take much to fall into the shiny object syndrome when starting out. When you are relaxed you can give yourself the time needed to master this.

I would suggest that you keep the job even if you don't consider the pay to be much but you at least know what your income is for the moment. Set a goal of how much you need to be making with SEO on your own. Setup a plan to get there.

I give you credit as I would not have guessed that from the OP. In my opinion those people you contacted steered you in the right direction.

That is interesting as I wondered if the "car dealer" had an internet component you could move into but doubted that was the case.

At the same time much of the advice here was based on the assumption you were earning a decent income selling cars - not living in one.

Glad it's working out well for you.

Good you've settled on a decision. To anyone else out there that may be looking for answers to a similar question...

If you're really keen on becoming an independent SEO Consultant and get an offer with an agency, taking the agency offer and getting the chance to look over someone else's shoulder would greatly increase your probability of success as you'll learn a lot of things firsthand and it'll additionally provide you great networking opportunities.

Stick with the car sales dude. You're pulling in 100k a year from that? That's good money. Hone that skill in man, you seem good at it. Hone that in, work on an internet business on the side.

SEO agency sounds like grunt work, you won't learn much there.

Instead spend the next 2 years banking $100k+/year, save it. Use some of that money to fund internet business, or even better, use the internet to help you sell your cars.

I would advise you to get a job in a new company to gain experience.
More over the working with a team of internet marketers will be useful for you and knowleges.

Don't take this the wrong way.

If you are asking in here, it sounds like you don't believe in yourself.

If you believe in yourself, go on your own. Otherwise, take the job.

I have a cool suggestion for you:

1. You don't need to choose one or the other, you can do both.

2. HOWEVER, you need to start PHASING OUT the car-selling job...

The way you do this is to take ONE DAY OFF of work, and focus that day on your SEO business... start doing whatever you think you need to do... learning, research, building websites, promoting yourself, etc.

Now you work 4 days as a car salesman, and 1 day as an entry-level (private) SEO consultant. You probably won't make any money for a few months.

Don't get a job as an SEO consultant. It's not a good idea. Just learn how to do it on your own, it's not hard. Try to rank your car website on the top page. Do some fiverr gigs for people... do SEO for free...

3. Once you start making a little bit of money from SEO, you can take ANOTHER DAY off work...

Now you work 3 days as a car salesman, and 2 days as your own private SEO consultant... By now you should be making some money.

4. Continue this process until you have completely eliminated your car business and transfered all your time and income into your SEO consulting business.

This is the same process I used in order to quit my day job and do a full time local self-employed business.

If you know you can make that because you are 'already' experienced in it, do you enjoy it?

If so then why not go this route?

SEO (or any other route) can mean years in a learning curve.

The OP has most likely made their mind up already. Since he has not responded to this thread. It has been up a few months already and SEO companies won't wait around long for a response. Last time the op was here was earlier this month in all this time, the OP never responded to this thread. So doubt the OP is listening now !

Moderators should consider lock this thread now. IMHO

You dont need permission to be what you want to be.You can always go back to the car business that's not going anywhere and you got that skill set.

Your dream and opportunity is now.
go get it.

Originally Posted by freeman323 Hello! Just looking for a little advice from some pros. My goal is to become an independent SEO Consultant. I have been studying a lot of SEO and Digital Marketing materiel from this forum and from other sources such as Alex Becker, Gregory Ortiz, and taking some courses on Udemy. I am currently by no means an expert on SEO. I am selling cars and have 3 years of experience doing so. Due to my experience in this field, I can easily make over $100,000 per year. I have recently received a job offer at a really great Digital Marketing agency for an entry level SEO Analyst position. The pay is $36,000 per year. It is really a great company, with great people, and for the first 90 days you are in training learning all factions involved in the Digital Marketing products they offer. They even do SEO for some fortune 500 and fortune 1000 companys. So much more then just local SEO. I understand that fortune 500 company SEO is different then local small business SEO. Given that my ultimate goal is to become an independent consultant, I am seriously considering forgoing the SEO Analyst position, continuing to make more money selling vehicles, continuing my self education, trying my hand at affiliate marketing, building a small portfolio and using my sales experience to start trying to find clients on my own. However, I want to be a great SEO not just an average SEO. My financial freedom is the ultimate goal. What would you suggest? Do I need agency experience? Would I be better off busting my ass selling cars, saving as much as possible, working my tail off during my off hours building my skills, and building my own business? After all, 5 clients at $500/mo is the pay I would make from the agency. I'm pretty sure I can make that happen. However, the knowledge and experience I would gain from the agency is the question. I have a car note and rent to pay so its not like I can save a lot with $36K... Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advice for any tips.

Hi Freeman,

I don't mean to be blunt.

But before quitting your job, you might want to consider your option carefully.

Being an expert in SEO subjects is one thing.

Being able to answer prospects' questions based on what they need and want to know is another.

Most people just missed the mark completely.

They assume that because they are now earning 4-5 figures a month from working as employees, they can be their own bosses and served others just as well.

But it is not so simple.

Unless you know how to deliver value based on what they need and want from you rather or explain in their terms than what you know or learn from other marketers theoretically, chances are you are not going to make it.

About 2 years ago, I remembered a post by another marketer quitting his job to do IM full-time but ended up not making the money he wanted as he was focusing on too many things.

Rather than what he should know and his subscribers as well.

However this is my opinion having come from a practical working country Singapore where the baby boomers are mostly anti-entrepreneurs let alone internet marketing.