Help Me Escape the SEM Client Trap

When I first started IM / SEO, I thought getting clients would be the safest bet to start making money.
I was right, but what I didn't consider was the consequences that come with this business model.

For years, all my clients remained ranked #1 on all their keywords and were satisfied with my service.
After Penguin, several of them are blasted away, while others moved down to lower on the first page.

Since then, they are hesitating to pay me, complaining, yada yada, and frankly I'm sick of it.
In addition, most of my affiliate sites were killed my the Penguin and I haven't had time to recover them.

I have about 16k In the bank right now. I'm seriously considering going full time affiliate marketing
and ditching my clients, but I can't figure out the right way to do it. I'm in this business to do what I want,
when I want, and not to be hassled by some client paying a measly $600/month. :zx11pisse

Before Penguin, my aff. business was pulling in $300-500/day on auto, and I know exactly how to replicate it.

Problem: I sit around and twiddle my thumbs all day worried about my fcking clients, feeling guilty, and can't
go full force on my affiliate business. Words can't explain how shitty this makes me feel, every single day.

Of course 16k isn't a lot of money considering my bills are expensive, but for example I have a new PD loans
site that's already made $200 not even ranked top 100 yet on main KW... That's 1/3 of what clients pay me, not ranked!
(The sales likely came in through a Press Release ended up syndicated on Banks.com & other PR finance sites)

The more tests I run and data I see, the less I want to ever work with a client again.

I would love to hear you guys opinions here... I'm thinking about ditching all clients besides the ones that rank
well and pay, and then slamming the gas on affiliate marketing oldschool style - dominating again.

Thanks in advance for the advice

unload your clients to me

I would gladly give my clients away, problem is I don't know how much longer they're going to pay. Lol..

Basically I'm double fucked - if I spend hours of time on their campaigns, then they cancel.... F'cked

If I buy a bunch of links to try and recover them and they cancel... F'cked.

Either way, I lose more time than $600/month is worth to me... that's like... 1 affiliate site.

Focus on getting those rankings back up so you can retain your clients if it's not too much work. Once you do outsource any tasks you can to free up time so you can work on your affiliate sites... $600/month is pretty low for SEO depending on what you are offering so it sounds like you could be making more working on your own online properties. Possibly jump ship once you're back in the $300-500/day and be selective with the clients you take.

Hehe... Getting back to $300-500/day while working with 10+ SEM clients that need links... we're talking a lot of TIME.

I'd almost rather just take a huge risk and work on whatever I want to work on, because I know my chances of failing are quite small.

hindsight46 said:

Focus on getting those rankings back up so you can retain your clients if it's not too much work. Once you do outsource any tasks you can to free up time so you can work on your affiliate sites... $600/month is pretty low for SEO depending on what you are offering so it sounds like you could be making more working on your own online properties. Possibly jump ship once you're back in the $300-500/day and be selective with the clients you take.

Click to expand...

Affiliate all the way! I did the exact same thing as what you're considering, and I had less money in the bank.

You sound like you know what you're doing, so to me it's a no-brainer.

Excellent... Encouraging to hear that.

I'm also 1 step ahead of most people as I have a 100+ high PR network all on
unique IPs & unique DNS... each domain only has 1-3 links -- fresh & clean.

All I need is more time...

soundsdelicious said:

Affiliate all the way! I did the exact same thing as what you're considering, and I had less money in the bank.

You sound like you know what you're doing, so to me it's a no-brainer.

Click to expand...

Outsource your clients work at a cheaper cost and concentrate full time on Affiliate. Even if they cancel you loose less money and earn more through Affiliate.

Contact someone on Fiverr and give him the seo job

Last commenter hit it nails on. Focus full time on your affiliate sites and milk the clients as long as you can by outsourcing it. Shit, find a service here for $150/month and let that be the only thing you do. You're net 450 and don't have to touch the site. You want to get rid of them anyway, so if they're not happy and leave then you get what you want and you get another month or two out of them ( this of course assumes that you dont want to use them as references). If by chance the BST helps the sites and your clients stay, well then you just opened up a nice little arbitrage play.

Totally agree with djc225. Find yourself a Freelancer and outsource these clients.