I cold emailed 172 small businesses offering SEO fixes

Built a Python script that crawls any website and spits out an SEO score — checks alt text on images, meta descriptions, structured data, load times, heading structure, the works.

Then I scraped 250 Melbourne small business websites, ran them all through the tool, and cold emailed the owners with their specific issues.

The pitch was simple: "hey, 25 of your 48 images have no alt text — Google can't see them. Want me to fix it for $149?"

Here's what happened after 172 emails in the first week:

2 real replies (1.2% reply rate)
1 auto-reply
9 bounces
1 guy called me out for using AI to write the email (fair, the first batch was rough)
1 pest control company owner asked to see my previous work — sent him the full audit breakdown and a $149 quote yesterday. Waiting on his answer right now.

Revenue so far: $0. But honestly having a real conversation with a prospect after 172 cold emails feels like progress.

What I learned:

Personalisation matters way more than I expected. The emails that referenced specific issues on THEIR site got replies. The generic ones got ignored.
$49 for a meta description fix is too cheap to be taken seriously. One guy literally said "changing a meta description takes 20 seconds, $49 is crazy." He's not wrong. The $149 package with 25 image fixes is a much better value prop.
Small business owners are skeptical of unsolicited emails (obviously). Leading with a free report offer works better than leading with a price.

The tool is free if anyone wants to try it: vemtrac.gumroad.com/l/seo-site-analyzer

Next week I'm sending another 175 emails with the improved template. Will post an update if I close my first sale.