I read this on SEO Book this morning about being an SEO service provider and it makes sense:
Here is why I think some of you might be selling yourself short if you sell your hard won skills to clients.
If you can return real value to clients i.e. not just ranking and traffic, but real tangible, value – then why aren't you keeping all that value for yourself? Why not compete with them instead? How about partnering with people so you get to keep an on-going share of their business? If you can position sites in lucrative keyword areas, that is a very valuable skill. Can clients even afford to pay what you're really worth?
If you’re really good at SEO, do you really need clients? 😉
I can fully relate to this – partnering with people to get an ongoing share of their business. But in real life, its not easy. For example, if you were partnering with an SEO provider for your business selling rubber stamps, how do you decide that “oh this stamp is sold because of SEO… and this one is not?”.
Many businesses want to keep their business within themselves. They’d prefer the idea of “outsource” instead of “partnership”.
… and yes, as much as anyone is skilled in SEO, they will need to work with other people for knowledge in the particular niche. Of all the “people”, clients pay best because they are “business transactions”.
What do you think?
Yes, I strongly agree. Does it mean that if I can build a wonderful website to make client to stay happily, I have to share the profit with the website owner for all the profit that potentially can make from those who stay on the site.
Providing services is difference compare to involve in the business with profit. Profit sharing is not easy as saying, when it come to money it will involve many terms and condition etc. 😆
Same to the SEO, I can be good it helping client to achieve in SEO, but when it come to partnership, we suppose to share the same risk in business regardless profit and loss.
Just because you know how to increase page rank does not mean you know how to run every business you optimize a website for. SEO optimization is a profession in its self. We charge a continual fee to manage SEO for our customers websites. We are one piece of the pie.