I get a lot of calls from people who want to team up with me. Some of these inquiries are from strangers while others are from clients who I have done great work for and want to use my skills on a new venture. It is extremely rare that I agree to team up because I believe that SEO equity stake team-ups are a bad idea.
To be clear, what I mean by equity stake is when someone has a product to sell (or an idea for a website) and they want to import the product (or offer it in some way), take care of distribution, and run the entire business, and “all” I have to do is build a website and optimize it. Once the site ranks high in Google, “we’ll each make tons of money”. Or so the pitch goes.
Why Not Team Up?
Pricing: I can’t control your product’s pricing and I don’t necessarily have a say in controlling what the product will cost. If you have romantic ideas of getting rich by pricing it high and I can’t control that, then we’re in trouble.
Customer Service: I don’t know how you’re going to treat clients. Since I won’t be handling that aspect of the business, I may discover that you don’t know the first thing about offering assistance, supporting the product we sell, or working with consumers.
Supply: You can’t guarantee supply. What if the website takes off and you suddenly run out of supply? Then what?
Long-term: I don’t know where you stand in the long-term. If the product doesn’t sell as well as it could, who is going to put money in to keep it going?
One-sided: In many cases, I get the impression that the person who wants to partner up with me recognizes that I bring a lot to the table and that they will in essence end up relying on me to do all of the thinking, or worse, they will become what amounts to a silent partner. I don’t want to do all of the thinking in this type of venture.
Nothing to Lose: In some cases, people ask me to team up where they have a long-running, successful business offline and want me to create the entire online marketing campaign. Sure, that’s great for them since they have nothing to lose. They get a free website and complimentary marketing from an experienced expert and if it works, they make some more money which is great. If it doesn’t work, or only makes a little money, well they had nothing to lose since I did most or all of the work.
Change of Heart: You may change your mind about being my partner or being in the business, or you may find a full-time gig elsewhere. Either way, I’m stuck, having done all of the work with nothing to show for it.
Partnership Goes South: What happens if the partnership goes south? What if things don’t work out as planned? A few things could happen but one of the worst outcomes would be that I have done my end of the work because the website and SEO are what’s needed right from the start, whereas your part will typically only come into play once the business gets moving.
50% vs. 100%: If I’m doing all of the work, then what do I need you for? I’m in the Internet marketing business. I could sell anything online, on my own. If I take on your project, I won’t have time for my own, where I get 100% of the profit rather than 50%.
Craigslist: Craigslist is a giant company that’s been around for a decade. You have no idea how many people call, describe a website that sounds like Craigslist and then tell me they’ve never heard of the site. Even worse… “I’m not good with the computer but I have a great idea that will make us rich.” Yeah, right.
Comments
Interesting points. I have thought about that, but hadn’t seen or heard anything about the timing of posts and Tweets etc. I will keep that in mind, thanks for the information.
Your article does not apply to many large potentially successful websites:
1. Many websites make money through clicks and have pretty generous monetizable events (like $5 if someone clicks on this or that). So pricing is decent and known in advance. The problem is getting traffic to the website. Take for example bankrate.com. They have very nice pricing but the big thing is that they have traffic.
2. The examples I have give above don’t need any customer service.
3. Your impression is actually one sided. Large national websites take hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop, they need data and agreements with parties that will pay them. They have invested all that in years of work. You are bringing marketing (potentially). Why would they pay you when they have no guarantee that you will succeed?
4. For the reason above, they have a lot to lose as they are paying $ each month on programming , hardware etc while you do seo. Their investors demand ROI on the dollar so they are under pressure. You have little to lose as your investment is soft and limited.
5. Contracts are written with a definite date and they can be non cancellable if you meet your targets. You have no risk unless you fail to bring traffic.
6. Like I said above, you are getting calls from looney tunes, not national website owners that have substantial projects and contracts with large reputable counter parties.
Hi Ryan,
Thank you for the comment.
1. Your use of the term “many” is vague. I manage websites run by clicks and I can tell you from a lot of experience that trading services for those sites are not worth it, especially given that the pay rate for clicks has been steadily decreasing over the last few years. With more sites with fewer advertisers ready to shell out big bucks, you rarely see $5 per click anymore.
Regarding traffic to the site: Bingo! That’s what you need me for but I don’t need you. I don’t think you fully understand that part of my point.
2. Wrong. There are always inquiries such as from potential writers and so on. Still, customer service is less important in these cases.
3. Wrong. It takes into account 15 years of experience from both sides of the fence. I don’t think you really understood my point. How often do “large national websites” get built for free? Never!
4. Incredibly insulting and ignorant. An SEO’s investment is soft and limited? Ask my clients who are making crazy $$$$ how limited I am as a resource.
5. Again, very short-sighted.
6. Like I said, your points don’t make sense relative to my article. Sometimes I do get calls from Looney Tunes but I also get calls from legitimate business people who just don’t understand how the Internet works.
Excellent Post! Thank you.
Hi.
Thank you for sharing this information why an sEO – client partnership is a bad idea . I have read you blog . Your impression is actually one sided. Large national websites take hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop, they need data and agreements with parties that will pay them. They have invested all that in years of work. You are bringing marketing . why would they pay you when they have no guarantee that you will succeed .
thank you
Hi Arun,
Thank you for the comment. They pay for consulting and professional services. A proven track record suggests that their recommendations in the future will be worth implementing. In any case, that is not at all what I am saying here, and is in fact a completely different topic!
Interesting post. Thank You!