Why I Refuse To Monetize My Services
Read Time: 1.5 mins
About 6 months ago, I started offering free SEO consulting to business owners.
It’s become my favorite way to meet solopreneurs.
And the best part is sometimes I get to meet them IRL, like last week!
But lately, I’ve had to start saying no.
Not to sound like a hotshot, but a lot of people have been asking for my time.
Since visiting my parents, they’ve seen me offer my free SEO consulting to these business owners on nights and weekends.
I genuinely enjoy it.
This week they asked, “Why are you doing this for free? Why aren’t you charging for your time?”
Valid question.
After all, I’m spending over an hour auditing someone’s website traffic, researching industry-specific topics that will grow their organic traffic, and laying out the blueprint that got me over 70,000+ monthly visitors to my website.
Plus, after my calls, I’m getting feedback like this:
After helping 30+ people with free SEO consulting in the last six months, it’s clear that I could turn this into an extra income stream if I put some juice behind it.
But there’s a few reasons I’m sticking to free SEO calls:
- I get to practice teaching what I know
- I already have two ongoing projects that take up 90% of my brain space
- I’m not a fan of service-based business models
- I get massive satisfaction from giving value up-front and believe it will pay back 10-fold in the future
Personally, the last reason is my biggest reason.
Not to be all woo-woo, but I believe in good karma.
The more you give, the more you’ll get back.
It may not be immediate, or in the form of money, but I’m with JT on this one: “What goes around, goes around, goes around comes all the way back around.”
But there’s a tactical reason it’s free too.
I believe giving away my services for free now could make me way more money in the future.
Delayed gratification is rewarding me in the form of testimonials and proof that my service has value.
Say, for example, I can charge $100 for an SEO audit and custom strategy today.
How much more could I charge after 50+ testimonials from business owners who have increased their website traffic?
Answer: a lot more.
If you want an custom SEO session, here's my offer...
Like I said, I’ve started being more intentional with how many SEO consulting sessions I’m doing each week.
With that said, I love a good barter.
If you know a friend or family member who has quit their full-time job to start a business, I’d love to interview them and write about their story.
In exchange, I’d like to offer an SEO session to help you identify:
- Low-competition keywords within your niche
- What your most successful competitors are doing and how to overtake them in Google’s search rankings
- How to get backlinks
- How to structure an SEO optimized blog post
If you have someone in mind, please do a warm introduction with me over email at frey@honesthustles.com.
Quick Update: Why I'm Sharing Less Side Stories
There’s no side hustle story today.
Full transparency, the last three weeks have been spent heads down working on my second niche website.
In business, it’s rare you get a combination of deep conviction and clarity around exactly what you need to do.
And I’ve never felt more confident in creating a revenue-generating website than the one I’m creating now.
I don’t like juggling two projects at the same time, but I’m making an exception.
More stories to come!
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