Okay, here is how this post happened.
A few weeks ago, I have created a post on IH titled "Do you need SEO?".
I didn't think it would get much attention, but I was wrong...
The next day, I was overwhelmed with emails and comments and had to spend 2 full days going through each website (I still get an occasional email from that post)
The numbers:
After all of this was done, I started to notice some patterns in the problems and opportunities that each site had, but did not know what to do with this information.
And then I saw this post about £49 copywriting service by @Rufusdenne
Seeing how successful it was, it gave me an idea to create a productized service on my own - one thing I thought I would never do.
This was also perfect timing as one of my client's contracts has ended at the end of April and I have 2 weeks since I start work with another client.
As I have already analyzed over 30 different sites on the IH community, it was very clear what was the biggest problem in terms of SEO.
Most of the sites that I reviewed had NO TARGETED KEYWORDS. No specific landing pages that had keywords or followed any search intent guidelines.
So, last weekend, I got to work.
I tailored the service in a way that all of you could implement it yourself. No monthly commitments, no jargon, no complicated SEO technical issues.
With this, you will be able to create new landing pages by yourself (or pass it to your content writer) that now have a chance to rank on those keywords. Of course, you can speed up this process by building backlinks by yourself (I will provide resources and advice on what would work for you).
So, if you want to kickstart your SEO, I am ready to help you!
I have priced it at $249, which I believe is balanced by the amount of work I need to put it and for the bootstrapped websites to afford. If this will prove successful, I may consider to launch it outside IH.
You can find the service here: https://benasleo.com/get-20-seo-keywords
I only have the next 2 weeks free to do this full-time, so I am only going to accept 10-12 of these and then close it down, as I don't want to get too much on my hands as with the previous post.
For those that don't need this service, I would appreciate any feedback on the landing page, price, or maybe any improvements that you think can be made.
P.S. Do you think this "product" would work and would make sense to post on Product Hunt?
Thanks for the mention @benas11 and I'm super happy how far this has come for us both. Best of luck with your newest offer, and looking forward to seeing how it goes for you!
I've been thinking about a similar style update, to go through my experiences with the post I made. It's a really interesting topic for us to explore – having sold 'services' for years, working towards productising them is a very complex, but clearly the way we should be thinking.
P.s. Based on the feedback received, I have decided to increase the price of our website rewrite to £129... anyone horribly disappointed by that can DM me and I will honour the £49 (limited to 3).
Yes, productization is a whole new game coming from purely service-based experience, but it makes sense. Trading hours for clients has reached a peak for me and the only way to expand is to create products or productized services that can be scaled.
I would be super interested in this post! It would be great to see the "behind the scenes" look and get your thoughts.
$249 feels too much for me, especially in the SEO field, where basically everybody is guessing what Google algorithm does. If you would have a brand and authority then maybe.
Thanks for the feedback - really interesting to get another perspective. "guessing" would a very strong word, as although no one ones the exact algorithm, we know a pretty good deal based on research, experiments, and real-life data. SEO decisions are not based on "guessing" - there are Softwares that provide data on which the decisions are made.
Also, are those screenshots and my portfolio (on my website) not enough to provide "authority" - I literally showed that my work is bringing huge growth (up to 60%) for my previous clients :)
P.S. Out of curiosity, if your site would rank for just one targeted keyword and would bring at least 1 conversion (email sign-up, free trial or paid subscription) every day (30 per month) - what would that be worth to you?
For me it's hard to pay for something which doesn't necessarily bring result. I know that in this field results come with time. But in the SEO world it's not granted if I'm correct?
Even if I apply advices from you, do I have 100% guarantee to see results?
Probably if you would offer some kind of "insurance", like "pay initial fee now, and after seeing the results pay the rest" I would be more keen to pay.
I didn't spend much time on researching your work. I mostly was basing on this post.
Happy to help :)
Only unrealistic results or expectations are not guaranteed and this is where keyword research plays a crucial role. Selecting the right keywords that you CAN rank for is the whole gist.
Also, no marketing efforts have 100% guaranteed results - if you know something that I don't - let me know :)
Also, your question about results sounds like:
Of course, one does not guarantee the other. This service of mine is useful for people that know what to do with keywords, otherwise, I don't recommend getting it, as it will not meet your expectations.
Either way, thanks for pointing these things out - it shows that my messaging could be improved!
Also, interesting thing I learned -- that almost any SEO effort is achievable. This might give you a clue how your potential clients might perceive the offer.
Yes, that's true - it's all the question of resources (time & money).
Sure. Since you are targeting indie hackers I'm giving you perspective of somebody who is not the marketing expert (but a developer), no need to judge it :)
good luck
No judgement, was just interested to discuss and dig a little deeper. As I already told you - this gave me a great perspective on someone that may not be familiar with SEO :)
I guess, you need to find a way to convince a developer to invest in this. Especially among Indie Hackers, where everybody tries to save as much as they can and try to do everything by themselves.
You asked about how much I'd be willing to pay. If I would be convinced that it's something that I can't easily research by myself. I would pay $50-100 initial payment and then the rest $200-$150 after seeing first result.
Which is kinda tricky, because it's hard to collect payments afterwards.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll try to figure something out
Hey @benas11 here my 2cents.
I feel that offering 20 kws + direct copy optimization might be a better bundle for $249. You can still offer content guidelines (which also serves as explanation for your direct copy work), so clients can go from there by themselves or come back to you for more work anyway, to save time.
Cheers
Thank you for the feedback!! The problem is that usually, there is nothing to optimize as whatever copy is created, those landing pages are not suitable for ranking SEO keywords. However, if I would see such an opportunity on the website, I would discuss this with the owner of the site as there is no point in creating new landing pages if the current ones show more potential.
You raised a good point: many times it'd just be better to reproduce the same landing graphically but simply add SEO-ready content. So the service could become something like "I'll create an SEO-ready version of your landing that you can put online in no time".
They'll then have 2 doors to the same service: (1) optimized for direct/referral/social media traffic and (2) optimized for SEO.
Content will be different between them, so no issue of penalties.
Really good suggestion! Especially the title is probably more enticing when it sounds like this:
I better go and start modifying :)