I remember when Bob (name changed to protect identity), today a client of mine who was then looking to start up a business after he completed his education, asked that question on an online forum, in context of an ongoing discussion: “But surely I cannot make my career as a middle-man and make my ends meet?” If lack of solid experience ever needed words to be embodied, then the words could not have been more pinpointed. That’s when I had engaged with Bob on a private conversation.
To cut a long story short, I could convince Bob, citing a series of other examples both of my other clients that had agreed to become my references as well as a lot of my market intelligence, that it was one of the most enriching experiences to become a middleman. For example, Bob could always become a middleman for my SEO consulting service and resell my services labeled with his brand. It is a perfectly ethical and extremely scalable business model.
In fact, what I further explained to Bob is that he becomes effectively a party to the end-to-end sales process. One of Bob’s interests was marketing to offline businesses. So he could easily get to the local offline businesses and sell them a SEO package at a higher price. Then, he could come back to me, and simply employ me at the backend to get his clients site ranked at a lower price. His profits would be the difference in price while I would remain the SEO services provider at the back office.
To make the deal sweeter, Bob could offer his local client a monthly SEO services package. That would make all of us happier, as we would get paid to maintain the clients’ search engine ranks and the client would make more business because of his consistent high Google ranks.
If you notice, what Bob is effectively doing here is that he is looking to resell SEO services that I offer to the local businesses. His job is to manage the front end and appear to be a professional SEO services management company to his offline clients. The clients would never know where the ranks are coming from. They would care for stable ongoing ranks, pay their price for it and be happy with their ranks. And Bob’s real job here is not SEO – it is about selling and managing the client interface.
Did Bob’s business scale? Absolutely, it did. He has a portfolio of SEO clients with him now, and at the backend I am keeping them ranked. He has a few major online SEO clients also. And to be honest about it, I feel a bit envious at times when he can take his breaks from his job while I still have to worry about keeping the clients ranked. However, I am happy that I chose to keep offering my SEO consulting services where I can scale my SEO services, true to my core area of expertise, and make the best use of the expensive set of SEO tools that I invest towards in the process.
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