SEO Resellers

Great info for those trying to resell SEO

As you know, I am on a daily crusade to find and pull together in one place all the best articles and blog posts on the topic of SEO reseller programs. If you read through everything I have here, you will see that it’s becoming quite a volume. I am working up to some MEGA SEO RESELLER LIST that I can publish that will outline what I think are the critical aspects of each program. But I am not there yet. More work to so. Until then, you can visit today’s article find. This is a well-written piece that talks about how to search for a great reselling partnership for your business. As always – Let me know what you think.

As always, I am watching the airways for new SEO reseller material that you might find interesting. This article floated by today and I thought it was worth a read.  They make the case that joining an SEO reseller program is actually the conservative thing to do when you are just launching. As I think about all the risks involved with starting your own business, I have to say that I agree. There is just so much emphasis needed on sales and marketing that you can easily lose yourself in the depths of product development. In this SEO Reseller article, they basically say that you should not take your eye off the ball. Sales and marketing are key to any business, especially in the SEO space. So let someone else do the delivery work for you while you work out your sales process. On other words – Outsource first. Sell. Then you can consider bringing the SEO services back in-house if you are not happy with the quality or think you can do it cheaper. All in all, good advice for those headed into the SEO reseller maze. Give it a read and see if you agree.

As always, I am on the look out for blog posts and other websites that talk about how to evaluate a program for a good fit. Here is the article I found today.  This is another in a series I have located on the topic of helping people sort the good SEO reseller program from the crapy. And make no mistake, there are a ton of bad programs out there. It really is the wild west when you start to see what’s going on. Everybody sees that the land is available in this SEO markeplace and they are all scrambling for the stake. There is really some crazy stuff out there.

As always, I advise people to go with what feels right. Find an SEO reseller program that seems honest. They shouldn’t be too hyped up, but will also be confident. They should seem like the know what they are doing, but they should also admit that nobody completely knows how Google works other than Google. The only way you will get to this level of understanding is to spend some time with them and discuss strategies. Share your SEO stories. Ask about other resellers and how they have done. What reselling strategies work best? What has not work for other resellers. This dialog will be very helpful both for getting information as well as just learning about each other.

Finding new news in the SEO reseller space is harder than you’d think. There is a bunch of stuff put out all the time, but it is not really new. There are actually only a few big players doing reseller programs. You can find most of the big SEO resellers on page 1 in Google. Beyond page 1, you have only small fish. I monitor most of the activity to see what is going on. I also try to catch as much of the new stuff as possible as it flies out. Here is a new press release on the topic of SEO resellers. It just came out today and I caught it on Google news. Give it a read and let me know what you think. I think there is a point here about transparency. It seems that SEO is so secretive. I know why this has evolved this way, but am ready to see it change. The Internet is  a MAJOR marketing platform. There is just too much business at stake to be running around whispering about it. Google is a major source of traffic for many many businesses – this is just a reality. I like the approach described in this press release and think more resellers will go this way in the future as we let our hair down in regard to SEO.

So many people ask us “can I make money reselling SEO?” And the real answer is, it depends… I mean, can you make money selling cars? Perhaps. Are you a good car sales person? This same line of thinking applies to search engine optimization as well. When people shop for an SEO reseller partner, they focus a great deal of attention on who they are going to partner with. And understandably so. But how much introspection are they really doing on themselves to determine if they are really ready and able to sell SEO? This may be where the real answer lies.

Starting any business is a very difficult thing. You have to have a long-term view. And you need to be ready for set-backs along the way. There really is no such thing as an “easy” start-up. Even guys who have done many start-up businesses know this. So when people head into the SEO reseller space and think they can just sign up for with a reselling organization and sell search engine optimization, I laugh. Why in the world would it be this easy? If it were, wouldn’t everyone be doing it? Seriously folks. Think that through.

So the real search strategy when you are trying to find the perfect search engine optimization to resell is to look both within and around. You need to be ready to sell. Sell, sell, sell. You need to know that this will be hard and that you have what it takes – both financially and emotionally – to stay with it. Then you also need a great SEO reseller partnership with an organization that delivers high quality search engine optimization you can rely on. These two things together will get you where you need to be.

Here is another resource that I found this morning while reading the Internet looking for SEO reseller programs. This is another website that is aimed at helping people who have a desire to jump into a SEO reseller program. And there are many people out there who are ready to take on the challenge of an SEO business.  It’s actually unbelievable.

So what are the nuts and bolts of the SEO reseller approach? If you are not familiar, I can lay it out fairly easily.  You want to get into the search engine optimization space, but don’t really have a developed product. In this case, you have to options. First, you could spend a year building out a great SEO product and working out all the bugs. Or you can resell someone else’s SEO product. Most people decide that the second option is better. And there are several advantages.

The specific advantage of joining an SEO reseller program is that is allows you to focus on sales and marketing – which are the BIGGEST challenge when entering any space. People don’t give this enough attention. But you don’t sell well, there is no business. So reselling is a great way to enter a space. You can be 100% focused on sales and let someone else do the SEO delivery. As things move along and your business grows, you can consider bringing it back in-house – if you want. But it is not entirely needed.

If you are really attracted to the idea of selling SEO services, then there are a number of factors you should consider. First, nice job for doing some research. If you reading this it is because you’ve realized the importance of a proper survey of the players before jumping into any relationships. In business they call it due diligence. That’s appropriate.

The first thing to realize about the search engine optimization space is that it is much more competitive than you think. There are simply very low barriers to entry. And if you remember anything from Adam Smith – you will understand that this will put downward pressure on prices (remember supply and demand curves?). The other thing to recognize is that SEO services today don’t mean just changing someone’s title tags. That’s very 2003. And those days are seriously over. If you don’t have a clear handle on the difference between on-site SEO and off-site SEO, you have more work to do than I thought.

If you do have the knowledge and desire to really offer SEO, then becoming an SEO reseller might be the smart first move. The reselling model is not unique to SEO. There are resellers in many many different industries. Many well-known ones are in technology. And the same trend is developing in search engine optimization. Here’s a quick overview of how it works.

Someone decides they want to be an SEO reseller because they want to be in this space but don’t current have a search engine optimization product to bring to market. So they look around for organizations that are specifically set up to offer the services. Most good programs offer a private label, or white label SEO, approach where the customer is not aware that the delivery work has been outsources. This is generally attractive because the customer relationship is maintained with the organization that sold the account. In this fashion, being an SEO reseller is VERY different from being an affiliate sales person.  If all works well, both the sales organization and the delivery organization make a share of the profits. The customer receives excellent value and all are happy. At least in theory.

What is white label SEO? This is when one organization does the reselling of the search engine optimization and another does the delivery work. In this sense, it is a partnership between two organizations. If they work well together this can result in a great business arrangement. A private label SEO program allows the sales team to really focus on selling while the SEO delivery team does the work associated with good, white-hat SEO. This is good for both groups – when they are a good fit. But you need to be sure you have found a good fit before you make a long-term commitment.

In case you have not noticed, we are big fans of becoming an SEO reseller. The white label SEO space is a cool place to be. There are a number of great private label SEO products in the market and even more coming. The idea of white label means that you don’t disclose to your customer that there is a vendor doing the work. This can be a great arrangement if you find the right reselling partner.

So we have a bunch of SEO resellers that work with us. Many of them don’t really do too much to generate income. I think that this works much like an affiliate program. About 95% of the people who join will really not do anything. It is not that they don’t want to make money or have good intentions. I believe that 95% of the folks out looking for SEO reseller deals just don’t want to put in the work required to make money.

But for the few that do, there is a real opportunity that SEO resellers have. The opportunity is to get involved in your local business community and sell through old-fashioned networking. I have seen some of our SEO resellers do this very well. They go to the local chamber of commerce or other business association and find out when the networking happy hours are happening. They show up and start talking to people. They learn about local businesses and the troubles they are having with online marketing.

It does not take long to start getting asked to help people if you are halfway intelligence about SEO. And if you have research SEO resellers and have a deal in place, when someone asked you to bid on some work, you are ready to go… I have seen this done very well by a bunch of our guys. You should think about it. Almost every local paper has networking events listed…