Web Development vs. SEO As Business Models

As MWI does more and more search engine optimization work I’m starting to see distinct advantages to SEO over web dev.

1. Recurring revenue. With web development I work on projects. When the project is done, I need to find another project to maintain cash flow. With SEO it’s an ongoing service so I don’t have to fight every single month for five new jobs.

2. Predictability. With web dev I never know how much money I’m going to make the next month. On any given day we could land a $60K project, a $20K project, or a $10K project. But I never know a month ahead of time what project I’ll be working on because chances are I haven’t talked to the client yet. People call up and within a week we’ve got a check for $20K and we’re starting to do work. But when your company’s revenues are only $50K per month and each project is a large chunk of that how do you make plans? With SEO, if I have 15 clients paying me $50K per month, I can be pretty sure I’ll make $50K next month and the month after that. I can actually make plans and execute them.

3. Emergencies. With SEO, I never get phone calls in the middle of the night. If someone’s server goes down, that’s not my job. If someone has a problem with a bug in their content management system, I don’t have to fix it. With SEO nothing happens immediately, and so nobody calls up with requests that have to be taken care of immediately. With web dev clients’ sites go down, they don’t work right, changes have to be made by tomorrow, etc.

4. SEO is easier. Having run a web dev firm for eight years and having done SEO for the past 2-3 years I have to say that SEO is easier in every way. You don’t have to know much programming, you just have to be mildly intelligent and take the time to learn how things work. Learning SEO is nothing compared to learning a programming language. Well, not “nothing”, but substantially easier and quite a bit more profitable. You do a good job at SEO and you could be making $10K per month within a year working 20 hours per week. You could do the same with programming, but it would take you four years and a lot more work to get to the same point.