Charging for SEO based on results

I'm just wondering if any professional SEOs charge based on results? (i.e. $X for a specified increase in SE traffic, or $X for specified jump in the SERPS)

I know some who charge a flat rate (i.e. per month) but won't guarantee any results. Seems a bit like paying a salesperson a flat rate with no commission - generally not a good idea for obvious reasons.

Thoughts?

BTW, if anyone on this forum DOES charge based on results, please pm me, because I'm looking an SEO.

I'd say this depends on the competitiveness of the keywords you're after. If you're after some extremely competitive keywords that could take months of work to see some jumps in the SERPs/traffic ( like getting to page 1/2 ), I don't think you'll find someone ready to spend his/her time and waiting for you to make money off the traffic he gets for you to pay him/her.

Also, from my discussions with other members here who offer SEO services ( I started having this private chats with some of the guys here since I decide to taking SEO projects and working as an individual SEO professional ), most of them prefer payment up front to avoid the situation where he won't get payed yet get the client's site to the top of the SERPs, get him a lot of traffic and make him a lot of money. YES, this happened to one of the most reputable members here.

Btw, I think you should have posted this thread in the SEO Professionals forum for better exposure and feedback.

You have to remember that SEO takes up a lot of time. These companies have to pay their staff's wages at the end of each month and every hour costs money. Considering the return that the majority of clients get from work done by a quality SEO, the outlay pales in insignificance.

Yes we do in some instances and you can make some serious money on deals like this.

The moneyspinner is a per application/percentage of revenue deal.

You need to have a knoweldge of the site, a knowldge of the sites conversion rates and some understanding of the market.

We only do it on long term contracts, with proven customers who we have worked with for a number.

The chance of somone walking in off the street and getting a per app deal off the bat is virtually zero.

However fi your confident of the reulst you can get. go for a mixed free. 50% of you usual free upfront, and 100% of usual your fee if you can hit challenging targets.

example

if you would usually charge 1000 pm for an seo campaign. Charge 500 pm free and you have a 1000 pm bonus if you hit a critera agreed upon.


Works on a shared risk basis with the client.

Clients like that usuall because they make more money from paying you more, if you hit targets than they would if they didnt.

You like it more because you can get paid 50% extra for the job.

I have seen revenue share deals where the seo comapny makes 4 tiemes what they would get through a fee via a revenue share deal.

But both client and seo compoany are happy due to high performance.

Thats right actually, being an ongoing process, and a process that depends on so many factors, choosing an option to earn only when traffic pours in and conversions happen .... umm I think no one would actually invest in that sort of thing

Like sensei said: If some one gets the work done the only thing he will get is the pay for the traffic that converted..and the client enjoys tons of traffic can divert the traffic anywhere .. can get conversions as well ..

Not sure, if some one here could take up this option as such, but I guess @DP you can get some though you will have to sacrifice the quality of SEO done..which is Not recommended

Completely Agree, i basically just have a salary and then depending on the results we have talk about bonus/increase. You cant do it based on results from the start, for one any seo wouldnt be working 100% because they will see no reward for it.

True. Any SEO would want a fixed amount per month to cover his expenses. A performance incentive can be worked out based on the time taken by the SEO to provide desired results. Lesser time, bigger bonus, more time, smaller bonus. Most SEOs I know work on advanced payment terms (monthly or quarterly).

You're right here, if you want to see faster results, tell your SEO person he'll get a bonus if you see faster than agreed/predicted results, in my opinion it's like in real life when you want to raise productivity.

Yes, we do. We've had problems with a few clients deciding they had the right to hold back payment if they weren't top of Google within a week, so we've had to cover ourselves with advanced payment plans like most other companies tend to do.

Absolutely. I think SEOs who might agree to results based payments would either be very raw and badly in need of work or users of BH techniques that make them confident that they will be able to get it up there, even if for a very short period.

I do this... by being their affiliate and sending them leads - and being paid for each lead.

I do it too ( the way you are ). There's a quite important difference between doing it that way and the way the starter of this thread wanted it.

I work on the domain I own, I put hundreads of hours or whatever it takes to get traffic by achieving good spots in the SERPs and I send that traffic to the affiliate company which pays me a percent of the sales I send through. If there's something I don't like about a certain company, I simply take off their links and put up links to promote another company.

But, working like that with a client its way too risky in my opinion. Why? Simply because the domain/site you'd work on and get good rankings for is not under your control. When you achieve what the client wants, he may throw you away ( I know you should cover yourself by signing a contract etc. but that's still too risky in my opinion ) and not get payed. Yet, he remains with the good spots and the traffic, while if I work on my own domain, even if a company decides to stop working with me, the traffic is still mine and I can send it anywhere else and still get payed for the work I put into developing that domain.

That's why I prefer not getting involved in this type of agreements with clients. I prefer getting payed regularly.

I don't offer SEO services, but believe that it is not the job of the SEO/SEM company to guarantee conversions. A good marketing campaign gets people inside your store... Once inside it is the value proposition and presentation that closes the sale. The site owner provides that. If I were offering SEO services, I would base all of my results on SERP placement... not revenue or conversions. The customers' business model, market demand, the online product/services presentation and the inherent competiveness of the product/service will mostly determine how many conversions take place... Being #1 in the SERPs for a product/service that has no demand or is overpriced or in some other way non-competitive is a losing proposition, i.e. the SEO was successful but the business still failed.

Yep.... I make more taking a lower commission from a discount seller than making 2x the commission from an MSRP publisher.

What you might want to consider is a hybrid plan, which includes a base rate as well as an escalator / incentive plan if that is something that would make you more comfortable. I've done this in the past and set up my base rate for the work, knowing that I would already make a valuable difference in the overall marketing of the site, and then added the incentive portion which gave me an added interest in the results (be sure it is ROI based and not traffic related). A good SEO will never do work based on incentive only, and you should run like the wind if someone guarantees top placement without doing a site audit and keyword competition analysis first.