Summary
SEO skills are essential and highly valuable, with multiple ways to make money through them. I'll rank these methods so you know the most effective ones.
Creating an SEO software business can be profitable but is challenging for beginners due to high startup costs and fierce competition with over 287 tools available and rivals like semrush securing $40 million funding.
One-on-one SEO consulting is rewarding, where I charge $1,000 per hour, but it's limited by your personal time capacity and has low startup costs.
Working as an in-house SEO professional offers an average salary of $62,000 and up to $142,000 as a director. However, job security is uncertain, and your earning potential is capped.
Selling productized SEO services is a more approachable option, with lower competition and more straightforward brand building, even if the upfront income potential is limited.
Starting a link building agency is now highly competitive and low-margin. A unique angle or reselling established services can be more effective.
Building an authority website offers high income potential but requires significant time and financial investment. It's risky for beginners but rewarding over time.
Micro niche websites are a great beginner’s approach with low startup costs and reduced risk, allowing you to gain experience and potentially attract SEO clients.
Starting a city-focused SEO agency is very effective. By becoming the SEO expert in a specific city, you can dominate locally before expanding.
Offering white label SEO services to agencies can be profitable with minimal capital costs. You benefit from the agencies doing the sales and marketing work.
Starting a national SEO agency has the highest income potential but requires considerable business skills and capital due to intense competition.
A niche SEO agency combines the advantages of client services with lower competition, simplifying marketing and operations. For example, focusing on a specific niche like lawyers, Chris Dryer's agency earns about $20 million per year. Consider evaluating niches from my list of over 4,000 SEO niches.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest starting with learning SEO skills. They are absolutely essential and can unlock various ways to earn income. If you're short on time and funds, aim to begin with a micro niche website. This approach is budget-friendly because you'll just need a domain and hosting. Plus, it's a great hands-on way to learn SEO basics.
A good way to monetize these skills is to consider offering one-on-one SEO consulting. It's rewarding and has low startup costs since you don't need any capital; just your expertise and some clients.
If you're interested in starting an agency, I’d recommend focusing on a city-focused SEO agency. Pick a city and become the local expert. This approach enables you to dominate a smaller market before expanding, and it has significant potential for gaining new leads and clients.
Offering white label SEO services to agencies is another smart move. Agencies handle most business tasks, and you just focus on delivering results. It's low-cost and minimizes competition since you're not targeting small businesses directly.
If you enjoy brand-building, selling productized SEO services is a good route. Find a specific service like SEO content optimization that fills a gap in the market. This way, you can create a recognizable brand with lower competition than full-service SEO offerings.
These steps are manageable for beginners, with low financial risk and high learning potential.
Quotes by Author
#### "Your income is directly proportional to the amount of value you add to the marketplace"
#### "It's easier to become known as the onpage SEO guy than to just be the SEO guy"
#### "Building an Authority website site is much less riskier than some other techniques"
#### "It's an amazing way to get your hands dirty and learn how to build a site"
#### "Dominate one tiny segment of the market and then expand out"
Full Transcript
so SEO is one of the most powerful skills you can have but did you know that there are 12 different ways to make money with it well today I'm not just giving you the list I'm ranking them from least effective to the absolute best and trust me you want to stick around because the number one strategy could completely transform your business or career so if you're ready to level up your SEO game hit the like button and let's Dive Right In so let's begin with the first one which is start an SEO software business which lands in the F tier so all those SAS businesses have high income potential and are extremely scalable they also require tons of upfront capital for example my partner and I have personally invested nearly 500,000 into our SEO content optimization software rankability and according to Founder The Upfront investment for SAS is between $10,000 to $30,000 and can get into six figures if you need to hire developers and there is a ridiculous amount of competition in the SEO soft sofware industry we analyzed the SEO software industry and found at least 287 different SEO tools you'd also be competing against companies that are well funded like semrush who raised at least $40 million according to Crunch base now I'm not saying it's impossible but it's definitely not the best place to start when you're new to the SEO industry so now let's move on to one-on-one SEO consulting or coaching which lands on the B tier for me you can actually make an awesome income doing this for example I charge $1,000 per hour for SEO Consulting but it does have some downsides first your income potential is capped because there's only one of you and you can't make more time it's also not scalable because you have to do the work and show up for the calls on the other hand one-on-one SEO Consulting requires zero upfront Capital to start and it's a lowrisk SEO business model and now it's time for the next way to make money with SEO which is get hired as an in-house SEO professional and this one lands on the D tier because your income potential is not only low but cap the average salary for an SEO professional in the US is around 62,000 but let's say you rise to the ranks and get to be an SEO director well according to glass store you can make a solid $142,000 per year after taxes you take home about $96,000 which would put you in the top 1% of earners in the world and in the top 10% in the United States but the reality is that most people will never get to that level and even if you did you'll hit a ceiling the other problem is that job security is a myth you could get laid off or fired and your income is gone overnight so at the end of the day the only income security you have is based on your skills a quote that's stuck with me since 2011 is from Dan Kennedy and he said that your income is directly proportional to the amount of value you add to the marketplace in other words if you want income security you need to become more valuable and the next way to make money with SEO is through selling product ised SEO Services which I'm placing on the a tier and this is one of my favorite techniques for a few reasons first it's much lower competition it's easier to become known as the onpage SEO guy than to just be the SEO guy it's also much easier to build a brand around specific product ey Services if I was starting today I'd consider building a product ey service for SEO content optimization because there's a huge gap in the market for this and all you would need to do is use rankability to streamline your entire business now the only downside of productized SEO servic is that they aren't as high ticket as full service SEO meaning your income potential is capped on the front end but you can make a killing on the back end by selling more comprehensive SEO services and now moving on to the next technique which is starting a link Building Services Agency now this might surprise some people but this one lands on the F tier back in 2016 I made over $470,000 selling backlinks there's no doubt that you can make money with it but there are some big challenges with this model first it's not that profitable backl are expensive now so your margins will be tiny after paying for placement and creating content but the biggest reason why it's in the F tier is because of competition everyone and their mother has a link Building Company these days and I get over 10 emails per day from people or companies trying to sell me backlinks so with that said if you wanted to sell backlinks then I'd recommend coming from a completely different angle I like what one gotch SEO Academy student Allen did with growth gorilla instead of just being being a general link building agency he focused on B2B SAS companies the other technique is to resell a proven high quality link building service like search intelligence so if you go to digital. PR you'll be able to see the white label Services option that search intelligence has and this this is basically a smaller version of what they offer at their main agency but if you wanted you could of course use this service to drive links to your agency website or any of the projects that you personally own or you could actually take these this link building service and you could actually resell this as a link building vendor so take a look at it it's super awesome go to digital. PR a really really great company and obviously the proof is in the pudding here um but definitely one of my you know one of my go-to businesses that I recommend for digital PR so check them out I'll have a link below the video so the next way to make money with SEO is to start an Authority website and this one lands on the D tier and I actually really like the authority site model but it's not easy to execute for a beginner I've been running got seo.com for over 10 years and invested thousands of hours in a Content but with that said Authority websites are awesome for a few reasons first the income potential is unlimited once you have authority and traffic you can monetize however you want at any moment I can start offering SEO Consulting on my website and immediately start making sales That's The Power of authority also building an Authority website site is much less riskier than some other techniques I'll be sharing in a second and that's because Authority sites usually have strong back bling profiles as a result most Authority sites survive Google updates with only some scrapes and bruises in other words website Authority and having a real brand helps you weather the storm therefore reducing volatility but this is assuming that your Authority website is monetized with products and services and you're a legitimate brand but there's one big downside of building website and it's that it requires a huge upfront and ongoing capital and time investment you need to create extremely highquality SEO content and you need a concentrated link building campaign so unless you have a big Bank role or you're willing to do all of the work then it's not the best option for a beginner which brings me to an alternative which is to build a Micro Niche website which I actually place on the C tier and I love microniche websites because a it requires almost zero Capital to get started other than a domain and hosting and B it's low risk because you probably be in a lower competition Niche that Google isn't hitting as hard C you don't need a decade of SEO experience to get results and D you can leverage your results from your micro website to land SEO clients you can then use the client Revenue to reinvest into an Authority website that'll be much more lucrative I view Micro Niche sites as a bridge to better techniques it's an amazing way to get your hands dirty and learn how to build a site do SEO and even how to monetize it's perfect for beginners and now finally I'll do the first of two s tier ways of making money with the SEO and the first one is starting a city focused SEO agency so instead of trying to be an SEO company that targets all the United States you'd pick a city like Kansas City and become the goto Pro in that City and this is what I did back in 2013 when I started my SEO company I ranked for St Louis SEO which became my number one source of new lead and clients for my agency and even though I rarely take on clients now I still rank for this keyword and people underestimate how much opportunity there is in just your little local area here's the business directory for a chamber of commerce where I live there are hundreds of businesses in that area and we only have 14,000 people in the city I know everyone wants to be Steve Jobs but when it comes to building a successful SEO business it's best to think small dominate one tiny segment of the market and then expand out now moving on to the next technique which is offering white label SEO services to agency and this one lands on the a tier for many reasons first like many other SEO Services there's almost no upfront Capital requirements second the competition is much lower because you're targeting agencies instead of small businesses and my favorite reason of all you only need a few agency clients to make a killing because they do all the Marketing sales and customer service and you can just focus on delivering results in fact many of my early SEO clients were white label Partnerships but there is one big downside of white label which is the investment per Campaign Will usually be pretty low because the agency has to make a profit but the difference is that one agency client might give you 10 campaigns to work on and that means you technically be making over $1,000 per month with just one client all right so we only have two more to go and the final F tier way to make money with SEO is to start a national SEO agency and the only reason why this got any points is because of the income potential which is very high however to actually succeed building a national SEO company you'd need strong Business Development skills and lots of capital to make it work plus the competition and skill level requirements are through the roof which greatly increases the risk of this business model I don't recommend it for any beginner but there is an alternative that is far superior and much easier which is the final s tier way to make money with SEO and that's starting a niche SEO agency so this has all the other benefits of starting a client services business but it's lower competition if you pick the right Niche and it doesn't require a massive amount of business skills by niching down your Marketing sales and fulfillment is a 100 times easier and if you need proof take a look at Chris dryers agency rankings. which only focuses on lawyers and they do around 20 million per year now the question is how do you pick a niche well the good news is I've compiled over 4,000 SEO niches to become the go-to agency in and you can get free access to it when you order my book The SEO entrepreneur
