How many SEOs...

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

How many SEOs do you guys think are doing well enough with their own sites that they could ditch any consulting/company work and make a decent income simply by SEOing their own sites?

Reading SEO blogs every now and then I often read how bad consulting and company work sucks and that every good SEO should simply ditch any consulting/company work and create their own sites, get rich and live happily ever after.

However that advice comes from people who are at the very top of the game who might have a distorted view, because it came relatively easy to them (because they're off the scale at what they do).

So 1 in how many people that work as in-house SEOs or SEO consultants could actually pull that off?

P.S.: Personally, I think that to be financially successful with your own sites, it takes a few abilities that one doesn't necessarily need to be a great SEO (consultant), though they overlap a lot of course.

[jimbeetle]

distorted view

Yeah, it's the point of view that distorts things. Myself, most of the SEOs I know run their own sites and might or might not accept any outside work. And agency people tend to associate with other agency people, in-house folks with in-house folks. It's more a thing of shared experiences and such.

So, you're going to get a different answer to your question from each group. From my point of view, probably 75% or so of the SEOs I know run their own sites.

I think that to be financially successful with your own sites, it takes a few abilities that one doesn't necessarily need to be a great SEO (consultant), though they overlap a lot of course.

Uh huh, guess that's why I'm kind of partial to the term "site runner," kind of akin to the "show runner" line producer responsible for the day-to-day operations in television. A jack of all trades, gotta' get it done type.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Hehe, I was hoping to hear an industry-wide estimation lol, but I can tell that's hard to estimate if it depends so much on the group of people you're around.

[jimbeetle]

He, he, yeah, that's why I think asking a bunch of SEOs is going to come up with that somewhat distorted view.

The only people who might have at least a ballpark idea are the people who run shows such as SES. There's usually a few demographic questions to answer during registration that deal with company size, etc. And, if somebody really had the wherewithal and industry knowledge they could always flip through the thousands of attendees and categorize them (Yeah, I'm up to 11,000, be done in a couple of more days). Then again, whatever numbers they came up with would only apply to the universe that attended that show.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

I guess my question wasnt that important in the first case hehe