SEO Payment Question -- HOW do you pay for SEO work?
 

NOTE: I don't provide SEO services directly although we do provide text content to help optimize mainstream sites .

My question is: HOW do you structure the payment for SEO work? Unlike graphics work where you see the product almost immediately after the person does his job, SEO work often takes a bit longer to see if the service was provided well. How do you guys normally structure payments?

You can judge by past performance, the only way to know is to see past successes, or know what your talking about befor you hire one (but then you dont need one), allthough im not sure i understand your question.

Most seo's dont look for business, but look for what pays best. But i would have no idea on billing someone for seo work i do, i wouldnt show my stuff for less then 20-25k, and a real look, with consulting would be a silly ammount.

Why create more competition, there really is such a small ammount of seo's that you could count them on a hand. People are gonna snicker and laugh at that statement but its the truth, maybe 4-6 adult seo's are capable of big things and big terms with a thought, and even that ammount is a stretch.

So someone worth the money, often it isnt worth there time to consult, i often give advice to people and im sure have made some people here good money BUT its not worth my time to create another me with someone elses ref code on it.

Im no fool, i'll take 10k this year for fresh terms vs 1k today i could make consulting and getting someone else them.

Probably wasnt much help..lol sorry Gene.

People come to me (in mainstream) saying they want to rank for a term, in order to drive sales or capture leads.

Instead of taking payment and giving up methods for how I do it, we come to an agreement on how much they're willing to pay per lead/action/sale.

Then, the site I get ranked is my own. If the customer flakes on payment, the leads/sales go elsewhere.

Good SEOs will rarely be willing to rank someone elses site. If they're so sure they can get ranked for some ubercompetitive real estate or mortgage term they'd just get themselves ranked, send the traffic to an affiliate program, and watch the checks roll in.

Ameriquest pays something like $35/lead. That means the top spots on Google for refinance terms are worth something like a few grand a day. What amount of payment would someone be willing to accept in order to do this *for someone else*? $100k? $500k?

Think about it.

I do a lot of SEO work on my own and for clients...when I work for someone, I get paid by the hour on a monthly basis.

Im having one of my older sites optimized. The guy who wants to do the rank work comes well-recommended but I'm just concerned re the amount of time between execution and discernible results.

Depends on how well the site already ranks. Could take 3 months or so if its in the basement.

I usually tell my clients that I will have results within 2 weeks and good solid rankings in a month. I do all white hat organic listings, so it does take a little while....but usually msn and yahoo I can get shit going in no time, google is a little longer

I was referring to google.. yahoo and msn are trivial to rank in for 90% of terms.

Wow, you can get listings, have clients, and still have time for stuff as petty as freelaptop and freeipod surfer shit?

Kudos.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

You dont.
There's the simple answer. :)

hmmmmm okay.... thanks :winkwink:

Good question, here's a bump to spark up some more debate on SEO pricing terms.
WG

Personally i would rather pay someone to do the donkey work based on my knowledge and wouldnt pay for somone unles they came extremely highly rec'd with proof and for that i would expect to pay a 50:50 fee + % on returns

In terms of selling work i wouldn't bother if the above wasn't met at least on bigger jobs and smaller work would be 100% advance fee with % or quarterly payable on pre-arranged results.

what your success story? post your portfolio and let the people here decide

:smokin

i sell those links, they are not my referral codes...i have a free stuff resource page and if you "donate" money I put your link places ;)

success story? i don't have one...i am a complete failure

An hourly rate is the industry norm.

There is much debate as to whether remuneration should be linked to the financial benefit derived by the client from the work. However, this would require honesty from the client and perfect information-sharing about the related profits; both of which are unlikely, since it is obviously not always feasible or in the client's best interest. i.e An seo works for 5 hours @ $400 / hour and is paid $2000 by the client. Yet the client derives $1,000,000 as a direct result of the work.

So ... hourly.

I have yet not payed for any SEO work, but I think I have to soon! The work I have done is not good enough!