💼 More On A SEO Agency Pivot

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If you’re considering an agency pivot from niche sites, then I’ve got more to share on that today. And if you missed yesterday’s email, you can read it here.

More on agency pivots in a moment.

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Let’s Talk Running An Agency (part 2 of?)

Why are you looking at pivoting to an agency model?

Really think about this. From what I’ve seen, most people seem to think it’s a natural transition because they were ranking sites before HCU.

But that end bit is the key part of this whole thing, isn’t it?

Cause let’s get real for a second - are you ranking now? For most former niche site people, that answer is a firm ‘no.’

And no, Bing doesn’t count.

The reason I want you to let this sink in is that you’re not ranking but you think you can rank other people’s sites?

I’m not trying to be an asshole here. But I don’t want you tanking someone’s real world brick and mortar business just because you need cash flow and think this will be easy money. And honestly, for most of us, cause you don’t wanna go back to a day job.

There are real-life ramifications here for people’s families and livelihoods if you (best case scenario) can’t improve their business or (worst case scenario) you make the rankings worse.

Have you ever ranked a local business website? Have you ever ranked an ecommerce site?

When you pitch your SEO services, potential clients want to see that you have a history of results.

So, the first thing you need to do is either work for free to get those results, or start your own site (local, ecomm) that you can use as a case study.

Ideally, more than one to show that it wasn’t just luck.

What if you need the money like yesterday and don’t have time to wait for those case studies? Then you’ll either have to compete with everyone else on price or with a performance guarantee.

If you compete on price, then we’re talking about ultra cheap packages that bring you clients who only want cheap….and they are often the WORST type of client.

With a guarantee, you run the risk of either working for longer on the project until you can reach whatever you promised, or having to refund when you can’t reach whatever you promised.

Or, instead of a guarantee you could do a performance based payment where they only pay you if X goal is met….but how can you be certain they will actually pay after you put in all that effort? You can’t.

Then there’s the whole situation of how the fuck do you even get clients in such a crowded space? More on that soon.

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Coming up…

Upcoming topics: more tips and ideas on Etsy and KDP, how it’s going with my chatGPT fiction ebook and the AI music thingie, and growing an ecomm site.

If you have a topic you want covered just reply and let me know.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

P.S. If you’re looking for high level discussions or tips on things like local SEO and Rank & Rent, I highly recommend Jacky Chou’s Advise community. I’ve been in it for several months and there’s tons of value in it, including a SOP for local SEO.

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