How to Start a 10K a Month SEO Agency Even if You're a Beginner
Starting an agency is one of the fastest ways to make money online. You don't need a ton of website traffic, and you're in control of your revenue streams. You can charge a premium even if you're a beginner, and it's completely scalable, meaning the more clients you get, the more people you can hire. You can automate the whole thing and create systems around it. In this article, we'll cover how to start a 10K a month SEO agency even if you're a beginner and don't know much about SEO. We'll cover how to find the easy package that you're going to sell, how to find your specific audience, and how to make your first 10K a month in 2020.
Finding Your Expertise
The first step in starting an agency is to figure out your expertise. You need to know what you're going to sell. The key here is specialization because you can't just be out there in a sea of so-called SEO experts selling random SEO services to software companies. You will not stand out, and it will just fail because you're going up against the competition. You need to find your expertise and offer specific services to a specific audience. There are lots of different things that you can price, package, and sell as a service and make thousands of dollars a month. For example, you could offer content writing and blogging, local SEO, social media marketing, PPC, franchise SEO, e-commerce marketing, AI writing, or a full content strategy.
Finding Your Audience
Once you've figured out your expertise, you need to find the audience that you want to help. This is where the power of vertical markets comes in because when you think about a vertical market, it's way easier to do outreach to find the right contact person and know who they are and do list building when you know the actual type of business. You could think of things like franchises, dentists, law offices, gyms, banks, or some specific area that you're really an expert in or know enough about and want to target. You need to find your audience, so think about your own life, your connections, your relationships that you have, maybe your cousin, your friend, somebody who has a business that they're running as a small person. Maybe you just help them first and learn the ins and outs of just helping them for free until you figure out really what market you want to go after.
Pricing and Packaging
Once you have a market and an offer, you need to figure out how to price and package this thing. Every single agency model always has a simple three-tier pricing system. Good, better, best, three options that you give the potential customer. You need to know who you're selling to and generally what their budget is. You always want to have a three-month minimum commitment. You don't want to just say, "Hey, I'll do it for a month, and then we part ways." You want to get it as long as possible. Six months is great, but three months would be the minimum.
Outreach and Visibility
To get visibility for your SEO agency, you don't need a big website with a ton of traffic. This is an outbound sales-driven approach. You don't need a website, but it can be helpful. LinkedIn and email are going to be the main sources of your outreach and sales effort. You're sending outreach to basically introduce yourself in a non-salesy way, especially if it's cold, to just know that you exist. You're sending it in a non-salesy way, saying, "Hey, introducing yourself, starting the conversation is really the key here." Just set up a meeting. That's all you're trying to do.
Closing the Sale
To close a deal in a meeting, you have to be the expert in the room, but you also have to understand the needs of the client. You have to ask a lot of open-ended questions to understand what their needs are, what their pain points are, what they're struggling with. Then you come in and offer the solution as the best solution. You ask leading questions to understand their budget, close, keep it short, keep it professional, and move on. You want to incentivize referrals and word of mouth. If the client likes you, you've been working with them for a while, say, "Hey, if you know anybody else that needs this, they probably do. When you stay in a vertical market, then you know I'll offer 10% off your next month or whatever that is."
Starting an SEO agency is an excellent way to make money online. You don't need a ton of website traffic, and you're in control of your revenue streams. You can charge a premium even if you're a beginner, and it's completely scalable. You need to find your expertise, find your audience, price and package your services, and get visibility for your agency. You need to be the expert in the room, understand the needs of the client, and close the sale. If you follow these steps, you can start a 10K a month SEO agency even if you're a beginner.
