How did you get started?

I've learned a lot from this forum, Aaron's book (Seobook) and other places and I'd like to try my hand at helping others with their SEO efforts. Those of you that do this "professionally", how did you start providing SEO services to the point where you could charge money for your services?

 

Having a decent portfolio is vital for the begining imo. Also if you start a page providing seo services it should be ranked well

 

You need clients who can give you testimonials and experience as well because SEO changes rapidly

 

So I guess I need to offer my services for free for a while to build up some kind of portfolio and get some testimonials.

 

i do work for friends and get them to give me genuine testimonials and they also do a fovour for me in their speciality so we get mutual benefits, i also get something to add to my portfolio

 

if you can talk the talk, show some results and demonstrate your usefulness in general you can land some paying jobs.

 

Showing that i know what i'm speacking aout ...

 

I don't do SEO professionally, but if I were considering paying for services, I would want to see some proof of your past results. Testimonials are nice, but if I'm going to spend alot of money on anything, I'd call the people who wrote the testimonials. I like to see "before" and "after" results myself. Good luck with your endeavor.

 

I'm a Web developer who spends his free time helping others out on forums such as this one (wow, who'd have thought I'd switch from the first to third person when writing so easily). If you're going to give something away, make sure it's for a good cause, such as educating others so they too can learn and become successful.

Yes, I'm saying I got my start in Web development - especially learning about how HTML and CSS really work, information architecture, accessibility, usability - that kind of stuff.

 

"PR is worth less"

 

Amen, i have done a lot of work for charities and non-profit ventures so if you want to do SEO or Design for free definitely consider this.

One example was a Children with Cancer group who were fund raising to build Country Retreats for the kids and parents as an interim between hospital and home as a stress free holiday environment but with 24hr medical care.

They were going to be featured nation wide on a TV morning show and for weeks on a commercial, after looking at their site i said this isn't going to fly. I fully built a site that night "then" contacted them and showed them, they basically handed me the keys to the server and couldn't be more greatful. I also done a forum with fully matching custom theme so the families and kids that met at the retreat could keep in touch.

That site and my work got massive nation wide exposure, virtually crippling the server in the hour or two after it went to air.

Moral of the story, you can't get a better reference, these non-profit places offer real value to people and will typically be online for years to come. They look great in a portfolio instead of some webmasters affiliate ClickBank store and your efforts "will" be appreciated which is payment enough when your doing stuff for free.

 

first and foremost, you must have the proof that you can rank website higher in the SE. Once you have the proof, you can use this to offer your services to other people.