How to Make Money With SEO. 5 Real Case Studies.

The skill to know how to drive traffic to a site through SEO is a skill that can make you a lot of money. I’ll be showing you 5 real case studies that show how much this skill pays.

how to make money with seo

I will also be showing you HOW you can start earning from this and this is a skill you can learn to grow your own online business or do it for someone else, through actual work or even consulting and get them to pay you big.

To really explain how important this skill is, let me give you some numbers that’ll explain the potential:

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A business operates without SEO, here’s how it turns out:

Let’s take a ski shop that intelligently places itself near a ski mountain.

Seasonally that place is going to get a lot of customers passing through. Let’s just say it’ll get 10,000 visitors during peak season and during that season, it’ll make $100,000.

Not bad at all! But it happens only during that season, as many mountain areas go through different seasons and rarely do people flock to a ski shop when it’s warm out.

Now let’s take that same ski shop and add in the following…

The same business adds in SEO. Here’s how that changes things…

The owner knows SEO or hires someone who does.

A site is created advertising the business and now through proper steps, it now reaches over 1,000,000 people, nationally and YEARLY. Through proper reach and marketing, that business now doesn’t have to wait till peak season hits. It can advertise to anyone who seeks ski gear, worldwide, year wide. 

As a result, the money it made before the site was up (Over $1 million), now pales in comparison to what it now makes with the extra reach to online customers and all the new sales it makes to people worldwide to people who would otherwise never know about or visit the shop, but because it has reach (through SEO) online, it can now do that.

And this isn’t an isolated story. Yes it is anecdotal for example sake’s, but believe me, it’s very realistic because the 5 case studies I’m going to be giving you will be showing that. 

5 real case studies:

1) First, allow me to cite my own.

It’s a local case study where I helped a business rake hundreds of extra leads a month and this was only because I helped optimize their website to show for very important keywords on Google. 

Not only did they get these extra leads, but they also got them for free, since SEO traffic is free traffic. With no added cost to their online marketing, this business was able to grow by a large margin.

However, because this was my first run in with helping a local business, I didn’t actually charge them for this, and it only took me a few hours to actually do all the work necessary to make these results happen.

However, the reputation I would have with the business owner would reach years ahead and after that successful experience, I would get more businesses reaching out to me, through word of mouth about how happy my original customer was.

Looking back, I could have easily made a few extra $1,000 a month and even a few $100 from consultations where I would explain how I would raise their site’s rankings on Google and get them more traffic.

Because I possessed the skill of knowing how to create, optimize and rank sites organically, I used this skill to market myself to the business. You can read more details about this specific case study and the steps I took in that link.

2) Time to cite a local SEO expert.

This is a man (Jay) I talk to quite a bit and he runs an agency where he does SEO work for businesses as well as SEM work in general.

Because of word of mouth and the success he gets his clients, his popularity is wide spread and he has no shortage of clients to work with.

The way he operates is that people who visit his site (here it is), go through a questionnaire where they identify what they need done for their business. After this is completed, a call is scheduled between the business person and Jay where they discuss what the business goals are and how Jay can help.

As far as I know it, Jay has a number of ways he makes money through his SEO skill…

One of those ways is that he explains how he can get a said business to rank for a particular keyword on page 1 and how once the results are there, he gets paid according to the popularity of the keyword, each month.

The more popular the keyword and the better the ranking, and the maintenance of that ranking (because they do bounce around), the more he gets paid, even $1,000’s a month.

Jay also provides reports and other sets up for the business he works with for additional costs. But with the example of the ski shop I mentioned, believe me, a business WILL pay a lot of money if it means multiplying the profits.

As a result, Jay makes a “Very healthy” amount from JUST this and he also runs his own independent site where he also earns from (also through SEO).

3) Niel Patel, an SEO success story.

If you don’t know who Niel is, he’s basically Jay but way more popular. The man understands SEO and practices it successfully on his blog in a way that gets his immense reach. His own name is basically his brand and he gets upwards of 30,000 visitors to his site DAILY.

Like Jay, Niel also provides consultations to clients who reach out to him (and I imagine it’s 1,000’s of people ready to pay him) and also charges an X amount for his services, which I imagine pay him pretty well.

It’s not out of the question to assume that Niel has made millions doing what he does. And he truly provides a great frame for how a person who knows SEO can make great money with it.

4) Independent affiliate sites.

SEO work can be applied beyond just helping businesses, a person with SEO knowledge can easily apply that to their own personal site and grow it. 

Through the free traffic that person gets, he or she can do affiliate marketing and make great money on their site.

Let me use myself again since this is one case study which I am a perfect fit for. Here is how I do it:

how to make money with seo example

Now obviously comparing my particular site to someone like Niel Patel is not in the same realm. The man gets a 100x more visits than I do, but I still manage to produce a great income from the numbers I get. Here are the numbers for that site:

I said it before, SEO pays. If I did client work like Jay or Niel do, I’d be making $100,000’s yearly. I just dislike working with business clients and prefer to do my own freelance work.

5) Independent sites that offer consultations or services. 

The very knowledge you possess in any major subject of interest is something that can pay you big money. Mix that knowledge in with SEO and you can REALLY make a lot of money. Here’s some actual examples:

These 5 case studies offer a plethora of ways you can do this too.

Whether it’s the countless businesses out there that need SEO advice and help or whether it’s the countless ways you can create your own independent site, sell products or market your skill to a niche audience like I just showed above, here are the CORE components you need:

The actual SEO skill is the first thing necessary. Every single case study here stems from the core which is the person who makes the money from it KNOWS how SEO works. 

When you know how ranking works, how free traffic works, how to generate it, how to optimize it, there’s countless ways you can go about it.

  • You can work for yourself, make your own site, and get your own free traffic.
  • You can do the exact same thing, but just help clients do that and they’ll pay you to help them.

4 thoughts on “How to Make Money With SEO. 5 Real Case Studies.”

  1. Reading this article actually did a lot for me. It has opened my mind to an opportunity that I can apply SEO skills to help move it to where it would become very profitable. 

    Looking at the 5 case studies, I saw an area where my expertise on SEO can really be useful. This has given me the motivation to want to become an SEO expert. I hope one month would be enough to get me to the level where I can use SEO to make a difference in my friends career. Thanks for the inspiration. 

    Reply
    • Well if you are just starting out, going through SEO training for 1 month will make you much more knowledgeable than most people, and you can share this knowledge with your friend to help their business, but ideally, if you seek to profit from SEO from things like consulting and offering services, I would start with a personal site, grow that and then use the information and experience from this to help your friend and any clients.

      It’s always good to go into SEO consulting with a good deal of experience so you can be prepared to answer all the questions your friend and clients would ask. 

      Reply
  2. Wow, this is a very interesting topic. A lot of us including me, needs to learn a lot more about how to improve our site through the help of SEO. I need guidance from an SEO expert, to be honest. Your achievements and income that you generate shows that you are doing really good. How expensive is it to hire an SEO expert (just wondering)?

    Great topic, I like it.

    Reply
    • There are different calibers of SEO experts, each offering from one to several services. Consultations can be free or cost you $1,000’s depending on your goals. And if you want services like SEO optimization and/or getting a site done for you, that can also cost $1,000’s and possibly way more.

      My suggestion is to get a free consultation from myself and see where you can go from there Pecilla.

      Reply

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