$24,000 a month from SEO clients...

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That is one of my goals to have in place by the end 2012...

That will come from 30 clients paying around $800 a month for my company to rank them on Google for the keywords that will convert the best for them.

Some will pay more, some will pay less. From experience though, for where I am at currently, $800 a month seems a good rate.

Now ... I currently am at 15 clients, so i'm half way there.



To get to the goal of 30 I am going to have to get two sales a month over the next twelve months. Which will obviously take me over the 30 mark, but I have to account for some dropping off. A BIG Bonus if they all stay.



I usually close one in every three qualified (i'll explain later) prospects. So to get my two a month i'm going to have to meet with six prospects a month.



Now this is where my prospecting activity comes in. These numbers can change a lot, but for the purpose of this post i'll put some averages in.

I do a range of activities a month. The one's I track are the ones I have complete control over, for example cold calling and referral calls (speaking with existing clients to see who they know).

Obviously there is a load of marketing activity such as blogging, list building, etc etc... but for me, the most direct action is the calls. Some of which will be calling the people on my email list.

So, for me, I have to make about 30 calls to get 1 meeting with a solid prospect. This is someone that has:
  • A decision maker.
  • A decent size business.
  • Committed to growing the number of leads for their business.
Sometimes they already have an SEO company, but they aren't happy with the results.


To recap, it takes 30 calls for one meeting and I want 6 meetings a month, So I need to be making 180 calls a month.

That's 45 a week.

I will be committing 3 days a week to this, so that will be 15 a day.



Worth looking at cold calling now??

Here's to a great year.

Chris Green

#offline marketing #$24 #clients #month #seo
  • Are you only doing local SEO? I dont know if you personally do the keyword research + SEO or if you outsource it but, why not do some PPC or something to get customers faster?

    You could always outsource to hubshout or something and use some of the money you have made to invest into a ppc campaign to get more customers.
    • [2] replies
    • I have a business partner that does the actual SEO. I've not tried PPC, it's on my list of things to test this year, but I wanted to make the point that calling is effective and people with small budget (like most of the warriors) can get stuck in fast.
      • [1] reply
    • Hi Keen,

      Can you explain a bit how you find clients with PPC. I really don't see how to target the campaign for that. I'd love to do it though!

      Thanks,
      Olivier
      • [1] reply
  • I had one question though. Considering I've never done SEO before, how would I go about outsourcing this part? Do you outsource the SEO part, or you do it yourself?

    I've tried to hire virtual assistants many times online about other things, and they've been a pain in the ass most of the time.

    I wish you good luck and I hope you can achieve your goals sooner than what you expect, which I am sure you will since you already have 15 clients.
  • Good luck with this matey.

    Really good idea on making yourself accountable here.

    Quick question - Your decision on pushing yourself to make calls instead of other methods ie email, flyers etc, has it come from what you have found to be the most successfull from getting your current 15 clients?
  • Great plan. What are your margins like? Is 24k a month going to translate to a nice income?
  • $24,000 a month?
    OMG that is so much money...
    so lucky u
  • A nice figure to start off with (though I'm not a fan of limiting yourself, I'm sure you could push harder either for more clients or a higher price)

    What do you offer in your SEO packages? any further upsells?
    As a displaced American do you charge 600 quid? or 800 dollars mate
    What's the average net monthly income of the businesses you cold call?
    and lastly, have you tried looking into direct mail ?

    Thanks

    Russel
  • You SEO guys remind me of 6 minute ab commercials. Selling an idea to fat people who don't know ANYTHING about working out/getting in shape, All they need is this one six minute ab product to get them a ripped and chiseled body.

    I feel sorry for the struggling businesses that will hand over money to soon realize SEO is just one small piece of marketing and a even smaller piece of making a business more profitable.
    • [3] replies
    • WOW...someones TROLLING. Actually I know Chris and he is a GREAT guy. SEO is the SINGLE best marketing for alot of businesses out there to get clients for the money spent. You CAN'T run large enough print ads to get the exposure you get with SEO in 99% of places. What else...billboards, yellow pages (REALLY??)...and the other offline and online marketing will burn right through $800/mo. The point is...for most long tailed keywords (ie city state industry), there are enough searches for MOST businesses to recapture $800/mo. Yes, I think $800 is a bit high, but you have no idea how many keywords Chris is doing and what else he does...manual backlinks take time and money. The best part is once you get to #1 on Google for your keywords, it is not that hard to stay there...especially for local search.

      Maybe you need to rethink what YOU do for businesses and not bash the SEO guys so much. I do offline and online marketing for businesses in ONE of my business ventures. SEO is a GREAT bang for the buck....maybe you could learn a bit from Chris.....

      Just sayin'.
      • [ 3 ] Thanks
      • [3] replies
    • For the record. I don't offer SEO as a on stop solution that will fix all of the clients marketing problems. I typically work with companies that have other marketing and sales activities going on, but they need the extra traffic and leads that come from being ranked high for what they do.

      I also don't work with struggling businesses. There's usually many other issues that a struggling business needs to look at first before SEO.

      My purpose for this thread was to encourage people to put their own plan together and look at how their own simple numbers will work so they can have a prospecting plan to work on in 2012.

      I'm sure you are very skilled at what you do an have all this in place and make a ton of money. But there's a lot of guys on here that don't.

      Instead of coming on and flaming ideas, why not share a little of your expertise and help people out?
      • [ 8 ] Thanks
    • Well, that's a shame, since you'r here looking for...what? I realize you are very busy on your bussiness, and getting a lot of cash without touching the internet and anything like that. If you feel bad for those people who does not know anything about losing weight I can assume you would help them for free if you could. So, I assume you would like to get some lists of bussiness and companies to make SEO for them for free because you feel they are being stolen from SEO guys. That is your goal isn't? well, go ahead and I would be pleased to see your results with all those companies, let's say whithin a month, you just put your report here showing all your success you get for them for free....cheers
  • Oh great! do you outsource some of your work sir?
  • thats a great goal. 800 dollars might sound like a lot for some people but the truth is, if you can get ranked high for certian keywords, it will generate you much more then 800 dollars a month, so its worth the price. and for the seo guy, worth it to. there is no investment really. so in the end of the day, everyone is happy
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  • Excellent post - good luck in 2012 reaching your goals! Cold Calling is an excellent way to get clients. That's the way I get the majority of our work.

    $800/month might sound a lot, but it is not. I have a client that is paying me $500 / month for SEO and I don't charge enough. He is in a number of cities in Texas and needs to rank in all of them. For a business that is bidding on jobs that pay them up to $200,000 / year (like my client) - $500 is nothing. And if you can produce results the sky is literally the limit.
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  • Great plan Chris! Keep us posted on your results!
  • People may think that the telephone is antiquated. That cold calling is not worth the time and effort. I know from experience, you want that human contact. The computer is too impersonal. By building connections within people and turning strangers into clients and then into affiliates is the best way to build your business.

    I wish you great success in 2012.
    • [2] replies
    • It's interesting that no one has mentioned video emails - I find them significantly more effective than any other method of contact. This is the method I'm using for 2012, and so far it works great...

      1. Email a short message and link to a [sales] video (I get a 50-60% click through rate from local businesses)

      2. Once people watch the video (my analytics shows me that the majority of the people watch the entire 1-2 min video), they can easily either a) say "no thanks", b) contact me for more information on pricing etc, or c) opt-in to see a more detailed video.

      Out of every 75 emails I send, I have 3 people that are interested in my services. What an easy way to narrow it down to people who are begging for your services! The video builds a personal connection, AND pre-qualifies the business owner.

      Now all I have to do is perfect my proposal and pricing, and I hope to turn 2012 into a great year!
      • [1] reply
    • This is good sharing
      i like this information............
  • @Voasi, excellent work. Now, as someone who has been local seo for a while let me tell you the REAL truth that everyone who claims to do local seo always seems to "leave out". Keep these in mind and you will do well:

    1. Customers DON'T care about their site being #1 on Google (initially they might) and sure it looks nice. They key metric is quality phone calls and quality leads. They want their phone to ring. You can never justify a client being #1 on page 1 without leads or phone calls. In the end, are you making them money or not.. as simple as that.
    2. Local SEO works BEST with businesses that have a higher value per customer and has search volume. Example: Lawyers, Dentists, Electricians, Plumbers, etc. Restaurants..not a good pick - you have to deal with volumes of keywords
    3. For a lot of "local" keywords to work, you have to add local modifiers to them; example "flower shop los angeles" - the question is.."how many people are actually using the city modifier of "los angeles" a lot MORE people just search for "flower shop" because they know that Google will give them local results, particularly from the "7-pack"; Now, unless you are in the middle of the city, even showing on the 7 pack can still mean LITTLE search volume
    4. Google now has blended search, this means that universal terms show up along with "local" terms example.. search "flower shop" you will see results that are universal as well as local (different from the 7 pack) - *This is where the money is* Getting your local client in the maps as well as the blended results for an other wise universal term
    5. Oh, and if your client has a ****ty site, conversions will be a factor..so you can upsell web design services
    6. (There's more but my fingers are tired)
    The point of the information above was to make it extremely clear that you need to ensure that the client is making money from your efforts. It won't matter if you charge $300 or $3000. If your client is making money then all is ok and they will gladly pay you. I have found that local search volume is often times not as high for some keywords, therefore you at times have to charge less. I applaud those who are able to sell snake oil by telling clients they can "rank on page 1" yet never get one lead and phone call and still be happy
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    • [2] replies
    • I am agree with some points above. Really I think SEO should be done only for those who really will get some sales directly from being in #1 in Google. Despite that, I still believe any SEO service as any service should be paid.
      If they get results or not, depends of many factors, like the design, the sales letter, the call to action, etc....

      • [1] reply
    • @Stewane,
      I am a newbie and just getting started with local SEO and the one thing I keep asking myself if I were the customer is:

      "If I pay this guy $500/month to rank me #1/top 3/first page in google, how do I know that advertising will turn into phone calls and leads?"

      I was hoping you could answer this for me as I don't want to get into Local SEO to scam local business, I believe in today's advertising it can be really effective and help boost sales for a company if done right.


      • [1] reply
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  • iamchrisgreen -- how exciting, dude! I have a similar goal I haven't announced yet. My birthday is in June so it'd be great to hit $10k/month but I'm so scared of the goal! Really, all it would take is 1-2 clients per month on recurring payment...

    Anyways, good luck and keep us updated.
  • You've got the right idea. Set a goal and then breakit down into smaller steps. Good Luck!
  • Very Great Idea Chris! Good Luck! Hope you will achieve your goals!
  • On a separate note.

    iamchrisgreen promised me in a thread a couple days ago he is going to release an awesome WSO on how to drive prospects to a seminar/webinar and subsequently turn them into clients paying $800 per month!!

    I think he's going for top Warrior of 2012!

    Haha, this is awesome though man, sometimes breaking down the numbers can really show you how awesome of an opportunity we all have, and how many people would die to be in our shoes. Yet, sadly, alot of us are wasting our potential....!
  • Good luck. Your drive seems strong!
  • I definitely agree with the people suggesting PPC in addition to SEO though.
  • SO amazing, it's weird
  • I see my question wnet relatively unanswered and unnoticed. Hmmm thank you regardless for starting this topic
  • Highly doable. Some SEOS get that off of 5 or 6 customers which would really drive Wrench crazy. Thing is it IS a small part of their advertising budget. Unfortunately on WF you say the word SEO and all some people think of are adsense sites and running SEnuke X so they always think that it isn't worth it and a ripoff.

    Professional SEOs put a lot more time into SEO because like has been said real businesses are not concerned with number of backlinks, how much spots you moved or even ranking number one for a term that doesn't make them money. You have to do better keyword research, better competitive analysis, skip the things that will give your clients a reputation as spammer and develop your own resources and contact to help them rank.

    Best of luck to you I have never quite hit that mark and have been turning away work that didn;t hit a good price point but I am now at the place where it may be easy to go after the cheaper market and yes to Wrench's chagrin $800 is on the low end for the business market. For the adsense crowd that of course doesn't make sense but its an entirely different world and a very different SEO.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • 24k a month seo business is actually very impressive. I am starting out my own seo company. Hope will get to 24k/month soon. your post is very encouraging.
  • This thread contains some amazing information on local SEO and I want to thank every one of you for your valuable contributions. I currently only have one client paying $400 a month for an AdWords and SEO combination campaign, but I am hoping to get many more clients at a higher price in the near future.

    There is a dilemma regarding business expansion that has been bugging me for quite a while. Once we contact larger businesses, explain our premise and pitch a lofty monthly sum, those businesses will likely require proof of past results. If a relatively young SEO provider has been successful in his past endeavors, but has a only few clients worth of results to show, how does he further prove his worth to seal the deal?
  • Any updates, iamchrisgreen?
    • [1] reply
    • Yup... how is it going?
  • Nice, Chris. You can do that and it is a perfectly reasonable goal. It's aggressive, but not out of reach.

    It'd be great if you can keep it to only SEO clients. That will help you scale and to organize your business. What happens a lot of times, is that you're talking to a customer about SEO and then you uncover a need for a website, PPC, email marketing, Press Releases, etc, etc. All that is great, but it definitely complicates scaling the business.

    A couple people have asked about margins...it is different for everyone, but I can shed some light on what we do...

    For local SEO, our 400/month product has about 150 in cost. Our 995 product has about 350 in cost.

    PPC is a loss leader. We charge 250/month mgt. It takes a good amount of time to manage, so I don't think we even break even on PPC management because of the time it takes, though there are no hard dollar costs for us, because we manage in house.

    Adwords express is the exception. This is a great product for many local businesses. We charge 250/month to manage it and there is not a ton to do, so it is very high margin - in the 80% range. So low top line revenue, but high margin and also a great lead in product.

    Web design can be great if you can find an outsource provider to do the design and launch cheap (we have). Charge 2500-5000 and have about 500-750 in cost.

    Hope that gives you an idea as to margins....like I said....different for everyone depending on what you're doing...
    • [1] reply
    • Bred. What's the best way to find an outsource for your wed design. I have 2 projects coming up that I'd love to outsource.
      • [1] reply
  • That is good plan Chris, I wish you good luck.

    I guess, if you can have a website for SEO and SEO it for yourself, that may (obviously yes) will give you more leads. Then you can proudly say that you had already proven your SEO Skills...

    but, I am sure that may take time,
  • You're four months along. How goes it?
  • I'm also interested on the progress so far
  • thanks for sharing
    i learn a lot
    • [1] reply
    • Right.

      I didn't really do the calling that i'd planned to do, but we have taken on about seven new clients since I started this post.

      Here's where they've come from:



      I went back and talked to some people that had enquired in the past but hadn't had the money at the time. I found that two of them were up for it now and became clients.



      I made more of an effort to ask existing clients and contacts who I should be talking to and got some great leads from doing that.



      This has been the best for me. I have made some great connections with agencies that don't offer SEO from within their team. So they meet the clients and pass the work to us.
      • [1] reply
  • Great advice. Plenty of great information throughout this thread.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Most time we're afraid of nothing. If we can summon courage to contact business owners, you may be surprise at the percentage that actually needed our service.
  • have you ever make project proposal to your client?
    i have 1 client offline, but he want me to make a project proposal.
    do you have sample project proposal?

    thanks
  • Wow man, if you are making so much money then i would like to try atleast for a month and surely i would get not $2400 a month but i would love to $1500 a month with 10 clients.
  • Cold calling shouldnt be your first line of approach. Infact, I know of large SEO firms, and they only employ cold calling when things are DEAD SLOW.

    I wrote a pretty extensive list of ways to find SEO clients just recently. You might want to have a read.

    Good luck hitting your goal dude, its definitely doable.

    By the way, dont undercharge!
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Hi John

      I agree mate. If you follow this through you'll notice that I haven't acyually been doing any cold calling. It's been through a real good mix of strategies and tactics.

      I'll check out your article as well.
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  • Great inspiring story I am a SEO professional but stil early days
    for me since i am into learning process
  • I'm wondering, did you delegate the SEO to someone else, or did you do the SEO yourself for each client?

    And if you did delegate to someone else, what was your criteria when picking someone/agency and how did you find them?

    Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Hi Zardon, great question.

      I have a business partner that does the SEO. We teamed up a long time ago. This helps me focus on selling and being more strategic with clients.

      If I didn't have him, I guess my criteria would be to find people that do what they say they are going to do, on time every time. Trustworthy. Good value for money (not cheap).
      • [1] reply
  • Great job man. and I would concentrate even more on getting referrals from your current clients as you currently are doing.. For me thats the best way. Since is free leads and leads that are super easy to close! Since Im in seo for the time freedom more than money I like to make things as easy as possible.
  • Sounds like a great plan for Offline SEO.

    Looking forward to see you share the results with us here
  • $24,000! That's a lot of money indeed!
    • [1] reply
    • It's subjective.

      To some it's a lot. To some it's nothing.
  • so SEO is still alive?

    I thought G. now decided any kind of S.E.O. "work" was B.H. and banning like a whore on skid row?

    I only want $3k+ month clients..who would that be? Dr's?
    • [1] reply
    • @sloanjim. With universal becoming a little fickle (ie. deoptimization; blended search; etc): The place where there's still money is local search: Make sure you target doctors, lawyers, chiropractors and those who place a premium for each customer gained. I made the mistake of BAD targeting earlier on. This will save you a huge amount of frustration.
  • Story is coming along well so far. Reinforces how important relationships and partnerships really are.
    So exactly how close are you to the 24k goal?
    • [1] reply
    • From SEO Clients, I would say around the $16k a month amount. Extra for other stuff we are doing for clients.
  • HI,

    What do you mean by "universal?"

    Non local biz?

    Thx

  • Good job mate.
    my SEO business pulls around the same amount you are trying to reach....
    Keep in mind sometimes it's easier to deal with 4 clients that pay 5K per month, than 20 paying 1K per month....

    Good job man, thanks for sharing.
    Also love your site
    Freelance Tips, Advice and Resources | Freelance Unleashed ,
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Agreed. I'm finding this more and more. We are starting to get the bigger monthly amounts. It allows me to be strategic with clients.

      Thanks mate
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  • Very Nice Work Go On
  • Pretty ambitious.. but if you're half way there, it's certainly not far-fetched.

    Best of luck to you Chris and I hope you reach your goal.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Another new client on board today!! Woop!
  • Brilliant thread, I think your forgetting the oldest method in mankind...

    Leaflet dropping, I regularly get 10,000 double sided flyers, and deliver them throughout the city and works fine no matter what I am advertising
    • [1] reply
  • I've tried to hire virtual assistants many times online about other things, and they've been a pain in the ass most of the time.

    I wish you good luck and I hope you can achieve your goals sooner than what you expect, which I am sure you will since you already have 15 clients.
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  • Update... Pretty close to this number now on a monthly basis. Some months going well over when a client asks for some extras.
    • [1] reply
    • That's great! What's your Net Profit?

      I'm running at about 60-65% net profit, which is great when you're doing $50k a month.

      Always trying to raise my net profits, but as I do more advertising, it eats away at it, which is fine as long as the amount of clients scale up too.
  • I have a quick question if you don't mind, are you just doing SEO on their already made websites or are you making their websites too?
    • [1] reply
    • Our strategy at the moment is to mainly do the SEO as it is recurring monthly income.

      However, when we get more traffic to their sites and we can spot where the traffic isn't converting. This is when we suggest changes (that we charge for), or they may need a new site.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
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  • keep this information coming please
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    Have you cracked the $24k a month yet?
    • [1] reply
    • Some months, yes.

      One thing to bear in mind though that I run this as a business, not a one man band. I'm sure you can do it alone, but it helps to have people around you to deliver the work you sell.
      • [1] reply
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    so what works with SEO these days? I thought G basically stopped all this "manipulation"?

    So if you charge a compaNY SAY $200 PER MONTH..DO YoU THEN SPEND $100 and outsource the work and pocket the difference?
    • [1] reply
    • It's much more complicated than that and we don't just outsource and manipulate.

      When we take a client on, we first spend time working out what they need to get found for. What's the market like? What's their current positioning like? Where do they need to improve.

      Then we go to work on a number of different strategies to get them traffic to the site.

      Our strategies change all the time as we look at what does and doesn't work and always with the focus of creating 'value' not manipulating Google.

      If you aim to manipulate, your ass will be bitten.
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