Looking to become Freelance SEO

[irishmik]

Hi, I have been soing SEO within a company and i was wondering would anybody know what my options were of doing it freelance? in terms of the market and how much i could realistaclly charge. I have seen some companies with advertised hourly rates of between £30-50 p/h! obviously i would like to make that kind of money, lol, but what are my chances and how would I approach companies? Any ideas would be greatfully received.

regards

mik

[businessesforsale]

Originally Posted by irishmik

Hi, I have been soing SEO within a company and i was wondering would anybody know what my options were of doing it freelance? in terms of the market and how much i could realistaclly charge. I have seen some companies with advertised hourly rates of between £30-50 p/h! obviously i would like to make that kind of money, lol, but what are my chances and how would I approach companies? Any ideas would be greatfully received.

regards

mik

Why don't you do a little moonlighting on the side first? Just build up four or five clients before jumping in the deep-end. You are going to need to provide illustrations of how you helped clients move up the rankings before you catch any big fish.

Don't charge too much to start, I would suggest £20-£25 an hour is the max. Remember you have no overheads unlike the established firms.

There is plenty of opportunity in this marketplace for someone with a real seo knowledge.

Go to google, hit on some popular commercial topics, then go to page 3 or 4, pick out some likely UK firms that are languishing for their key terms. Put together a list of 20-30 firms and get on the phone.

hth

[Chef-Design]

@irishmik:

Send me a PM with what you can do, specially other skills or tricks (beyond cleaning code and submissions...). I can give you some good tips or maybe even reccomend you to someone i know

[earl@studdsey.fsnet.co.uk]

well in my experience the top SEO guys Earn a great deal of money,in fact I would say one of the highest paying jobs in the computer industry.

But to earn top money you have to be pretty sure of your abilities.

If you can get people onto page 1 of google for competative keywords ,the sky is the limit,as for an online shop or many other industries that use the search engines to obtain work or sales being on page one is what it's all about.

Most SEO consultants I know charge about £650 a day.

Hope that helps.

[HellHathnoFury]

It Sounds Like I need to get into SEO then!. No on a serious note these guys are giving you some sound advice. It is all fair and well doing it for you a company as a one off and for some low end competiton keywords but to be effective and successful you need to build on some testimonials to justify increasing you hourly/daily rate, for when you eventually fly the coupe.

You need to be able to show customers the reason you charge more is because you are the best!

Hope this helps to reitterate the ponit of establishing credibilty before going for the throat! As mentioned by some of the other posters let me know what you have achieved and what skills you posses and I too might be able to help

[lady_evolver]

I would take on a few projects on sites like Scriptlance first and build up some reputation first before quitting your regular job.

When you start out you will probably have to bid lower to get projects, but as you get more feedback and reputation you can start going after larger projects and charge more.

Eventually of course this may lead to you having enough work to leave your regular job. It's much better to do it this way rather than quitting all at once and then having to worry about paying all the bills at the same time as trying to build up your freelance career.

Hope this helps

[Janine Forder]

have a look on people4business - the services marketplace as they list "sellers" and it will show you their rates, warning for anyone though, they wont pay self employed people.

[ManchesterCopywriter]

Any ideas why people4business - the services marketplace don't work with the self-employed?

[Janine Forder]

They dont want the risk of paying freelancers from the tax and NI point of view, they dont want any risk of being liable for tax and NI, so if they pay a company this is deducted before it comes to the employee - e.g. me or you. They have an umbrella company who take the money for you, you are an employee of them temporarily, they take the NI and tax off and also 5% off your rate. From a client point of view (the people you work for) they then have to pay people 4 business 10% on top of your fee plus VAT (which i dont charge) and then this 5%. The umbrella company also let you claim £2 per week expenses, mine are about £150 per month so it wasnt viable for me.

[ManchesterCopywriter]

Thanks for the feedback on that site - I'll remove my details from them and give them a wide birth. )

Sarah