I was wrong about niching down... pivoting is easier with a niche.

[Steve Brownlie]

Just a thought here as a lot of us are reinventing ourselves, exploring new revenue streams etc. I thought I was clever being broad and general.

It seemed to make sense at the time. Lots of people want links just do links for everyone.

But most of my market was niche affiliate site owners (experts in SEO spamming? lol). People smart enough to know what moves the needle and evaluate our work etc. That market as we all know got hit hard.

Most agencies don't care because their clients churn a lot anyway, and they struggle a lot anyway with tight margins, so they just want to buy cheap marketplace links and be done with it. They don't care that what we do is different or even what a natural link is as long as it hits their client's silly KPIs.

I kinda regret not being 'the SEO agency for ... i dunno pest control' or something. You get the idea.

Then when the 'new shiny thing' comes you can easily be the 'automation implementation guy for... pest control' and already have the customers and mailing list. Even past customers might come back to you for the new shiny thing because their SEO they left you for 2 years ago doesn't do it etc.

But when your mailing list is 'random' and 60% of them went out of business since you started over a decade ago and had to be leaned out... building those coherent upsells and pivots is a lot harder.

So yeah I was wrong about that for sure. I know it's 'guru' advice so I could easily have listened to any one of all our 'favourites' lol but for whatever reason I was blind to the obvious.

 

[eliquid]

I don't think it's that easy.

You might not have been the SEO guy for "Pest Control". but you might have had 1 or 2 of those Pest Control clients instead of 100.

If the 2 pest control clients you had went out of business, like in your example... what makes you think that all 100 didn't go out as well?

Whoever is left of them ( maybe 3 out of 100 ), might be ones that stayed in business.. but decided to jump out of SEO and go into PPC.. or put SEO on hold. What would you really do with 1, 2, or 3 clients now when you pivot?

BTW, this is how guys like me catch scammers and fraudsters.

One year they are the Google Local maps pack guru, the next year the RAPE links experts, the next year the golden triangle links pack guru, the next the rented website SEO experts, then the AEO expert, then the automation SEO expert, etc.

If they were GOOD at anything, they would still be GOOD in it. Not chasing the next butterfly every 6 to 12 months. If you were GOOD at something why would you abandon it and all the month you are making in it, to chase a new dream and start at $0 now?

When people pivot all the time and never talk again about the stuff they claimed they were an expert in anymore, that's how I know someone was lying. Other people are watching this too.

Only genuinely jump ship if it's 100% dead. Pivot too many times, and we can all see that as a negative,

I see plenty of "agencies" or freelancers hit that big ol list after shit hits the fan, and they still are doing it. So it must still work to draw in clients.

There is a designer who use to be big here and on Wickedfire. Guy passed away in another country and his brother took the business over like 6 months to a year later and still sends out emails.