SEO services for clients

The research was done by AI agents that open web pages. Some sites refuse them; where that happened we say so. The small numbers point to the source list at the end. Where a figure is our own sum or guess, it is marked “our estimate” or “our sum” and the basis is given.

The claim

Our collection holds only 4 tweets on this scheme¹. Three come from accounts with a large following and are quoted below. The fourth comes from a small account and is described without the name. With so few tweets, this page rests mostly on how the method is promoted and practised generally. View counts are as collected on 6 October 2026. Dates are worked out from each tweet’s ID number. The page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

In the quotes below, a slash ( / ) marks a line break in the original. Emoji are removed, and decorative bold letters are shown as plain ones. The full texts were read on 10 October 2026².

“Imagine turning €0 into €120,000 per month with AI-enhanced SEO… / Intrigued? / • Learn the exact strategies for AI-driven #1 rankings / • Explore lucrative SEO partnerships worth $150,000/month / • Harness ChatGPT’s power to generate $10,000 in SEO income / • Implement a proven system for thousands of free social media leads / • Gain exclusive access to a free AI SEO course / • Network with fellow SEO enthusiasts in a dedicated community / Transform your SEO skills today! / 1. FOLLOW @JulianGoldieSEO / 2. LIKE AND RETWEET / 3. DM THE WORD “MASTERMIND” to get priority access now!”

@JulianGoldieSEO, 17 October 2024, 2,940 views¹².

“Still paying for SEO courses? Stop. / I’m giving you everything for free: / Link Building / Make Money with SEO / SEO Systems / AI Agents / SGE & Topical Maps / You know what to do / 1 LIKE & RETWEET this post / 2 COMMENT “COURSE” / “Smart people learn SEO. Smarter ones learn it free.””

@JulianGoldieSEO, 11 October 2025, 14,696 views¹². “SGE” was Google’s name for its AI-written answers. A “topical map” is a plan of the pages a site needs to cover a subject.

“This is a perfect example of AI enabled high ticket service and he’s around $500k ARR in like a week / (I’m a customer btw) / Josh is gonna do full stack ~ish SEO offer that’s prob a $5-10k/mo retailer 2 years ago / He’s gonna fulfill it with AI workflows that cost pennies on the dollar / Same outcome / $1-2k/mo …” (truncated; the tweet goes on to say that most people want “someone else to handle a thing”)

@landforce, 6 October 2026, 2,843 views as collected¹. The live count was 12,234 on 10 October². “High ticket” means high-priced. “Full stack” means covering every part of the job. We read “retailer” as “retainer”, a fixed monthly fee.

The fourth tweet, from an account with under 100 followers, reports one month of income of about $6,400 from four lines of work: about $700 from SEO, about $2,000 from guest posting, $3,000 from building websites and about $700 from digital products¹. It is the only tweet of the four that breaks its figure down.

Two of the four tweets are from one account, and those two hold 17,636 of the 20,579 collected views, about 86% (our sum)¹. Neither of them states a price for the service, a number of clients, a cost or a time, and both offer free course material². We did not view the images, videos or reply threads attached to any of the four tweets, which may say more.

What the scheme is

SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It is the work of making a website show up higher in Google and other search engines: fixing technical problems, choosing the words people search for, writing pages, and getting other websites to link to the site.

In this scheme you sell that work to businesses. There are three common forms:

• A retainer. The client pays a fixed fee every month for ongoing work.
• A project. A one-off job such as an audit (a report on what is wrong with a site).
• Links and guest posts. A “backlink” is a link from another website to the client’s. A “guest post” is an article placed on someone else’s site, usually carrying such a link. Sellers charge per link or per post.

The newer pitch adds AI. Language models write the articles and reports, so one person can serve more clients for less. Some sellers now call the service “AEO” or “GEO” (answer or generative engine optimisation), meaning getting a business mentioned in AI answers rather than in a list of links.

The trade itself is real. Google’s own advice to businesses says: “Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners”⁷². The questions are what a client pays, how many clients one seller can win and keep, and which versions of the work break Google’s rules.

The arithmetic

Income from client work is price per client times number of clients, minus costs. The tweets give the result and leave out the parts. Of the four, one states a price, and none states a client count, costs or hours¹².

Most price data is in US dollars. On 9 October 2026 the European Central Bank’s reference rate was 1 euro = 1.1206 dollars, so €120,000 is about $134,500 (our sum)⁹⁵.

Step 1: what one client pays

Ahrefs, a company that sells SEO software, polled 439 SEO providers about their prices⁴. The page was updated in August 2024 and does not say when the poll was run.

• The most common monthly retainer is $501 to $1,000: “20.4% of respondents charging this rate”⁴.
• “68.8% charge $2,000/month or less, meaning only 31.2% command retainers of $2,001+”⁴.
• Freelancers average $1,348.63 a month per client and agencies $3,209⁴.
• The most common band is lower for freelancers: “For freelancers, it’s $251–$500/month and $101–$500/month”⁴.
• Providers in business two years or less average $1,540.52 a month and $73.05 an hour⁴.
• “57.4% of SEO agencies command $1,001+/month, compared to only 32.2% of freelancers”⁴.

The averages are worked out as if every respondent charged the top of their price band, so they run high⁴. The poll also predates most AI-fulfilled offers.

Other sources point the same way:

• Clients report paying less than providers report charging. Backlinko’s panel of 1,200 business owners spent “$497.16 per month on SEO services” on average. That is 2019 data, restated on a page updated in April 2026⁶.
• BrightLocal’s 2023 survey of 534 local marketers grouped US respondents by how long their clients usually stay. Those whose clients stay under 12 months average $799 a month per client. Those whose clients stay two to three years average $1,569. Beyond three years the figure falls back to between $1,190 and $1,355⁸. This compares different marketers. It does not show one client’s fee rising over time.
• In Search Engine Journal’s 2021 survey, 32% of agencies had client budgets under $1,000 a month, and only 14% of freelancers had clients in the $1,000 to $5,000 range⁷.
• In a 2026 Sitechecker survey of 73 SEO agencies, 42.5% charge under $1,000 a month¹⁹.

Are prices falling, as the third tweet suggests? The surveys of established agencies do not show it. In Sitechecker’s survey, “Over half of agencies (56.2%) are raising retainers in 2026” and “Only 2.7% are actively decreasing prices”¹⁹. An SE Ranking survey of 260 agencies, most of them serving small or local businesses, found “70% of the agencies surveyed either increased their pricing recently or plan to in 2025”⁹⁴. Both cover agencies already in business, not new AI-run offers.

Where the seller and client are matters a great deal. In India, 76% of providers charge $1,000 or less a month. In the United States and Canada, 79.1% charge at least $1,001, and some charge $25,001 to $50,000 a month⁴.

At the top of the market, the agency directory Clutch says “Most SEO agencies on Clutch charge anywhere from $100-$149/hour”, and the mean reviewed project is $37,158.66, though the usual project is under $10,000⁵. That is not a one-off fee: the usual project runs 12 months, and “The average monthly cost of SEO projects is $3,199.19”⁵, close to the Ahrefs agency average. Clutch does not say how many projects lie behind those figures.

Step 2: how many clients the claimed income needs

These are our sums: income wanted divided by the monthly price per client, rounded up.

The last column divides $134,500, the dollar value of €120,000⁹⁵.

So $1,000 a month is one to three clients. $10,000 a month is a small agency’s full list of clients. €120,000 a month is a company with staff.

For comparison, BrightLocal found that 69% of local SEO freelancers have between two and ten clients⁸. It put the number of clients a freelancer personally manages at 9 in 2017⁹ and the freelancer average at 14 in 2022⁸.

There is also a limit on hours. At the freelancer average of $71.59 an hour⁴, $10,000 is about 140 billed hours a month (our sum). Billed hours are not all the hours worked: a 2026 report on 1,452 digital agencies says owners of the smallest studios bill only about a quarter of their time¹⁶.

Step 3: the “$500k ARR in a week” tweet

ARR means annual recurring revenue: the monthly subscription income multiplied by twelve.

The “Josh” in the tweet is Josh Pigford (@Shpigford, about 75,600 followers)³. His post of 25 September 2026 offered an AI-run SEO service to five software companies: “$1000/mo. If you’re not happy after the first month, full refund.” He described it as a trial of whether the numbers work for him: “my test here is to figure out if they’re terrible for me”³.

His later posts give his own figures⁹¹:

• 2 October: “i’m doing one more quick round at $1500/mo. just 9 slots left. then will be launching the service publicly at $2000/mo.”
• 3 October: “i’m about 97% certain this thing will be at $1m ARR by end-of-month”, growing “just via twitter DMs”.
• 5 October: “this has continued to absolutely blow up (at nearly $400,000 ARR in 10 days)”. A post he quoted the same day reads “one week in and all sales done through twitter.”
• 7 October: “i got a few dozen clients with https://firstindex.co”.

The service now has a site, FirstIndex. On 10 October it read “$2,000 Per month. One plan.” and “Not happy with the first month? Ask for your money back within 7 days after it ends”⁹⁰. So the price went from $1,000 to $1,500 to $2,000 in two weeks³⁹¹⁹⁰.

Our sums: $400,000 a year is about $33,300 a month, which is 22 to 33 clients at $1,000 to $1,500 each. That fits “a few dozen”. The customer’s “around $500k” a day later is roughly in line with the seller’s own number. At $2,000 a client, $500,000 a year is 21 clients.

What this does and does not show:

• These are the seller’s own statements. No payment proof is shown, and we found no TrustMRR listing under the name⁹¹.
• “ARR” here is less than two weeks of sign-ups multiplied out to a year. When we read the posts, no client had finished the first month, so the refund period had not ended for anyone³⁹¹.
• There is no data yet on whether clients’ search traffic improves or whether they stay.
• Four days before the offer, the seller wrote of his own site that he had “really struggled with getting any seo traction” and that the result “still isn’t impressive on a pure impressions-count level”, though “there was an obvious change in trajectory”⁹¹. So clients signed up before any client result had been published.
• By his own account, sales in the first week all came through one X account with about 75,600 followers³⁹¹.

So the case shows that demand at $1,000 to $2,000 a month is real and fast for a known founder with an audience. It does not yet show that the service works for clients, or what a seller without that audience would sell. The tweet says the work was “prob a $5-10k/mo” retainer two years ago²; the site puts the agency equivalent at “about $25,000 a month”⁹⁰. Both are the sellers’ own comparisons.

Step 4: what it costs

The costs are low.

• Tools. Ahrefs lists its Lite plan at €119 a month, Standard at €229 and Advanced at €419. It describes Standard as “Perfect for freelance SEOs and marketing consultants”²¹. Semrush, on annual billing, lists plans from €112.52 to €436.99 a month²². Prices were shown to us in euros. One researcher read the Ahrefs prices as monthly billing; another could not tell.
• AI writing. Anthropic lists Claude Sonnet 5.5 at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens²³. A token is roughly three quarters of a word. Our estimate: a 2,000-word article is about 3,000 output tokens, or 3 cents. Even with fifty times that in research and rewriting, it is about $1.50 an article, so twelve articles a month for a client cost under $20.
• Marketplace fees. Upwork charges freelancers a fee that “ranges from 0% to 15% per contract”³⁰. Fiverr’s fee page refused us; see “What we did not verify”.
• Tax. In the United States, self-employment tax is 15.3% on top of income tax, owed once net earnings reach $400⁸³. Tax rules elsewhere were not checked.

So the tweet’s “pennies” for fulfilment holds for the writing²³. But the cost is the same for everyone. If anyone can produce the work for cents, the price and the profit are set by who can win clients and keep them.

Step 5: winning clients

Agencies report where new business comes from. In AgencyAnalytics’ 2026 survey of 494 agency professionals, referrals were named by 85%, word of mouth by 72% and outbound outreach (contacting strangers) by 33%¹⁸. The Promethean report says of studios under ten staff: “Revenue generation is driven almost entirely by the founder’s personal network”¹⁶. In Sitechecker’s survey, the most common limit on growth was too few qualified leads, named by 39.7%¹⁹. BrightLocal’s 2019 survey of 650 local marketers likewise found word of mouth the most effective way to win clients¹⁰.

A newcomer with no network cannot use the top two. The documented cases on this page used three other routes:

• A marketplace. Benas Leonavicius: “Things really took off when I joined Upwork”⁴². A 2022 interview page says Upwork was the Goldie agency’s “#1 source of new clients”⁵⁴. Upwork’s fee is 0% to 15%³⁰. These starts date from 2021 or earlier, and we found no current figures on how often a new SEO profile wins work there.
• Teaching a niche. Jade Pruett: “I conducted webinars for various therapist associations, appeared on several podcasts to discuss SEO specifically for therapists, and maintained an incredibly competitive price point”⁴⁴.
• A public following. The FirstIndex seller says his first week’s sales all came through X⁹¹.

The fourth route is cold email, and the data on it is thin:

• Backlinko and Pitchbox analysed 12 million outreach emails: “Only 8.5% of all outreach emails receive a response”²⁹. That study is from 2019 and covers emails asking for links, not sales emails.
• Business owners in Backlinko’s panel mostly find SEO providers through referrals, Google searches and reviews⁶.
• Google tells businesses to be wary of SEO firms “that email you out of the blue”⁷².

We found no sourced figure for how many replies turn into a paying client, so we cannot give a sourced number of emails per client.

Step 6: keeping clients

A retainer only adds up if clients stay.

• Backlinko’s panel had been with their current provider “for an average of 3 years”⁶. In AgencyAnalytics’ survey, 62% of marketing agencies say their average client stays two years or more¹⁸. That covers marketing agencies in general, not only SEO.
• Against that, one marketing agency’s 2026 report puts SEO client churn (the share of clients who leave) at 3.2% a month, 38% a year: “SEO’s 38% churn reflects challenges with expectations”²⁰. It gives no sample size or data source. Its own two figures do not agree: 3.2% a month works out to about 32% a year, not 38% (our sum). Nor do they fit well with the tenure figures above. Treat it as a rough indication only.
• At 32% to 38%, a seller with 10 clients would lose 3 or 4 a year and one with 42 would lose 14 to 16, who must be replaced just to stand still (our sum)²⁰.
• Only 30% of business owners “would recommend their current SEO provider”, and 65% had used several providers⁶. Those spending under $500 a month were 75% more likely to be dissatisfied⁶.

One reason clients grow impatient: producing pages is not the same as ranking. Ahrefs tracked a million random new pages, and “Only 1.74% of them” reached Google’s top ten within a year. In a stricter sample of two million English pages with content, 6.11% did²⁴. These are random pages, not professionally optimised ones, so a good SEO should do better. It is a floor, not a forecast.

Step 7: revenue is not profit

The tweets state revenue.

• In SE Ranking’s 2025 survey of 115 SEO agencies, “84 out of 115 agencies report profit margins of 11% or higher, with 58 achieving excellent margins of 21%+”¹⁵. Net margin is the share of revenue left after all costs.
• Promethean puts the average digital agency net margin in 2025 at 13%¹⁶.
• Planable’s 2026 report on 186 agencies (SEO, social media and mixed) found “21.5% of agencies in the sample are losing money”, and “53.3% of one-client agencies are losing money”¹⁴. Its method sits behind an email form and was not read.
• In the Sitechecker survey, 41.1% of agencies report gross margins under 30%¹⁹. Gross margin is what is left after the direct cost of doing the work, before office and other running costs.

At a 20% margin, €120,000 a month of revenue is about €24,000 of profit; at 13% it is about €15,600 (our sums). A solo seller with no staff keeps far more of each euro, as the cases below show, but has far fewer euros.

Step 8: the link and guest-post line

Links are sold per piece, so the sum is different.

• Ahrefs pitched 180 sites and found a paid guest post cost $77.80 on average. A paid link added to an existing article cost $361.44 on average across 450 sites²⁵. Ahrefs describes this data as a few years old.
• FATJOE, a wholesaler that fulfils orders for agencies to resell, lists placements from $72 to $456 depending on the strength of the site, and says “your clients will never know fatjoe was part of their blogger outreach campaign”²⁸.
• At retail, Goldie Agency lists “$302 per backlink” on sites rated DR 30 to 39, $342 at DR 40 to 59 and $390 at DR 60 and over²⁶. DR, “domain rating”, is a score from 0 to 100 that Ahrefs gives a site for the strength of the links pointing to it.

Our estimate sets the two current price lists side by side. FATJOE’s wholesale prices are $120 at DR 30 and over, $216 at DR 40 and over, $336 at DR 50 and over and $456 at DR 60 and over²⁸.

At $126 to $182 a link, $1,000 a month takes 6 to 8 links and $10,000 takes 55 to 80, before labour. At the strongest sites this wholesaler charges more than this retailer, so there is no margin there. The two companies are set side by side only as price examples; we do not know where either gets its placements. At $302 to $390 a link, the small tweet’s guest-posting income of about $2,000 would be five to seven links (our sum)¹²⁶.

Google’s spam policy lists “Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links” as link spam unless the link is labelled as paid⁶²⁶³. Whether a particular seller’s placements fall under that depends on how the links are obtained and labelled, which we did not check for the sellers named here. FATJOE describes its service as “100% genuine outreach”²⁸. Goldie Agency’s site says “Manual outreach, no PBNs”²⁷. A PBN, or private blog network, is a group of sites run only to sell links. See “What the rules allow now”.

What people who tried it report

Surveys of people in the trade

• SE Ranking, 2025 (279 SEO professionals worldwide; number of freelancers not given): “The median income for freelancers is $58,000, compared to $50,675 for in-house SEOs.” The mean is $84,322. “Almost 14% of freelancers earn over $150,000 per year.” It differs by region: “In the EU, freelancers enjoy a 28.6% higher median income than employees”, in the UK and Ireland they earn 17.4% more, and in the United States about 25% less¹¹. The median is the middle person: half earn more, half less. The article itself says the sample may be too small for firm conclusions¹¹.
• Ahrefs, 2024 (234 SEOs, mostly in the UK): “Self-employed roles paid less, with a median earning of $46,436.” Only 7.3% of respondents were self-employed, about 17 people (our sum)¹².
• BrightLocal, 2023 (534 local marketers, 72% in the US): “52% of freelance local marketing experts earn less than $50,000 in revenue”, with the caveat that “many of our freelance respondents told us that their consultancies run part-time alongside other employment”⁸. Its 2017 survey put the freelancer average at $49,422 a year⁹.
• Sitechecker, 2026 (73 SEO agencies): 50.7% make under $20,000 a month in recurring revenue, 35.6% are one-person operations, and “Only 12.3% of agencies reported revenue over $200k per month”¹⁹.

For scale, US median pay for employed market research analysts and marketing specialists was “$78,760 per year” in May 2025¹³. That is about $6,563 a month (our sum). It is a US employee figure, and the freelance medians above are worldwide. Choosing this as the nearest job group the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes is our judgement; the page does not mention search marketing.

All of these surveys cover people still in the trade. Nobody who tried and stopped is counted. We found no data on how many people who start selling SEO ever get a client, how long the first client takes, or how many quit.

Individual write-ups

Two newcomers published cold-email results on the forum Indie Hackers. Both are the writers’ own accounts.

• One built an audit script and emailed 172 small businesses in Melbourne offering fixes for $149. After a week: 2 real replies and “Revenue so far: $0”³⁹. We found no follow-up.
• One, who already ran a small web agency, sent 43 personalised emails over about three weeks, got 17 replies and “1 became a paying client - a $230/month SEO audit for a local business”⁴⁰. The post promotes the writer’s own prospecting tool.

One post describes the AI version directly. It says an agency earns $10,500 a month from seven clients: “Seven clients pay $1,500 a month each”, using an AI model plus a paid platform, with no SEO specialist⁴¹. The post is written to promote that platform and links to it, the agency is not named and no payment proof is shown. It says the agency already “had more SEO leads than it could serve”. The reported result for clients after three months was small: “Clicks grew from 123 to 188” across the whole client set⁴¹.

AI search is changing the product

In AgencyAnalytics’ 2026 survey, “59% of agencies report shifting SEO strategies to compensate for reduced organic visibility”, and 41% have new trouble proving results to clients¹⁷. A Pew Research study of 900 US adults’ browsing in March 2025 found that people who saw an AI summary on Google clicked a normal search result in 8% of visits, against 15% for people who did not⁸⁴.

It cuts both ways. In the same agency survey, 66% report rising demand for optimisation for AI search¹⁸, and 11% name AI search as a source of new business¹⁷.

What the rules allow now

Selling SEO is legal. We found no licence requirement, though that is our conclusion from finding none, not a sourced statement. What matters is which version is sold, because Google’s rules decide whether the client’s site benefits or is harmed.

What Google permits and forbids

Paid links. Google’s spam policy lists as link spam: “Buying or selling links for ranking purposes. This includes: Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links”⁶². The consequence, on the same page: “Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all”⁶². The allowed version is a paid link that is labelled: “Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value”⁶³. A labelled link passes no ranking credit, which is the thing most link buyers are paying for.

Mass AI pages. Google’s guidance says “using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users may violate Google’s spam policy on scaled content abuse”⁶⁴. AI-assisted work that adds real value is allowed⁶⁴. When Google brought in this policy in March 2024, it reported “45% less low-quality, unoriginal content in search results” afterwards⁶⁵. That is Google’s own measurement.

Enforcement is frequent. Google’s status page shows four spam updates so far in 2026 (March, June, August and one from 24 September to 8 October), against one in 2025 and three in 2024⁶⁶. Google did not say what each targeted. Since April 2026, “Google may now use spam report submissions to take manual action”, which includes reports from competitors⁶⁹. A manual action is a penalty applied by a Google reviewer.

Damage can be permanent. When Google cancels the effect of spam links, “Any potential ranking benefits generated by those links cannot be regained”⁶⁷. Lifting a manual action for links means removing the links and asking for a review, which Google says “can take several days or weeks”, and longer for link cases⁶⁸.

“AI search optimisation” is not outside the rules. Since May 2026 the spam policy covers attempts to manipulate Google’s AI answers⁶⁹⁶². Google’s guide says “you can ignore tactics like “chunking” content, creating unnecessary AI text files (like llms.txt), or pursuing inauthentic mentions”⁷⁰. (“Chunking” is cutting pages into small pieces for AI tools to pick up. llms.txt is a file some sellers add to a site for AI tools to read.) Ordinary SEO work still counts for AI features⁷⁰.

Guarantees. “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings”⁷². The same page says the client is responsible for what a hired SEO does⁷².

Local profiles and reviews. Anyone managing Google Business Profiles for clients may not guarantee placement and must hand back control within 7 business days of a cancellation. Google “may suspend a Business Profile and/or the Google Account you use to manage” it⁷³. Where reviews are found to be fake, the profile “will display a warning to let consumers know that fake reviews were removed”⁷⁴.

Marketplaces

Fiverr says: “Services that violate, or create a significant risk of violating, a third party’s terms of service are prohibited”³¹. Upwork bans “Doing anything that breaks Upwork’s or another company’s or website’s Terms of Service”³². Neither names backlinks or guest posts. How either enforces this against link sellers was not checked.

Law

• Fake reviews (US). An FTC rule announced in August 2024 “prohibits businesses from creating or selling such reviews or testimonials”, including AI-written ones⁷⁶. The FTC is the US consumer protection regulator.
• Undisclosed paid posts. The FTC treats a paid mention as an endorsement to be disclosed when “an advertiser – or someone working for an advertiser – pays you”⁸⁰. EU law bans, in all circumstances, “Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear”⁷⁹. How national authorities apply this to guest-post sellers was not checked.
• Cold email (US). “Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $53,088”, and “The law makes no exception for business-to-business email”⁸¹. That figure was set in January 2025⁹²; the guide’s own edit note still says January 2024. We found no 2026 adjustment. Email that follows the rules is allowed. EU email rules were not checked.

Regulator cases

We found one case about SEO sold to small businesses. In FTC v. Pointbreak Media, the FTC charged a Florida operation with “falsely claiming to represent Google, falsely threatening businesses with removal from Google search results, and falsely promising first-place or first-page placement” for fees of $300 to $700⁷⁷. The FTC’s 2019 release describes it as “operating a telemarketing scam that targeted small business owners” and reports a judgment of $3,367,666.30 against the main operators⁷⁸. In August 2020 the FTC said it was “sending refunds to 4,467 small business owners with an average refund amount of $158.32”, a total of about $707,000 (our sum)⁹³. This case concerns only the companies and people named in it. It is about false statements and robocalls, not about selling SEO as such. We found no FTC or state case against an SEO seller from 2025 or 2026; that may be a gap in our search.

The FTC has also brought cases against sellers of AI-branded business opportunities over earnings claims⁸⁶⁸⁷. None concerns SEO services, and each concerns only the companies named in it.

How a seller loses money

Little capital is at risk. The losses are time, tool subscriptions, and clients who leave or want refunds after a Google update the seller does not control. A client who disputes a card payment costs the seller €20 with Stripe, plus €20 to contest it, returned only if the seller wins⁸².

Who makes money from it

Established sellers of the service. See “The upside” for payment-verified examples.

The account behind two of the four tweets. The account’s X profile links to the AI Profit Boardroom page on Skool, a platform for online communities, and its bio advertises a “FREE AI Course + Community” and a “Free SEO Strategy Session”². That Skool page is headed “By Julian Goldie”, and it and a second Skool page carry the same X handle⁴⁹⁵⁰, and goldie.agency lists both groups in its menu²⁷. Together these pages show a service business and a teaching business.

• The agency. Goldie Agency’s site lists link building at $302 to $390 per backlink in packages of 4, 12 or 20, content at $100 per 1,000 words, and claims “70+ SEO experts behind your growth”²⁶²⁷. A 2022 interview page says “Julian started by landing clients on Upwork and it’s still their #1 source of new clients”, and that the agency mainly sells link building to other agencies⁵⁴. A customer page on Hunter.io lists 30 team members⁵⁵. So the author has run this scheme, with a team. The agency’s site gives a Hong Kong address and a company registration number, 78693085²⁷; we did not check the Hong Kong register. The agency’s terms say it “does not accept responsibility for any effects that link building and other SEO activities might have on the client’s website rankings” and that “fees paid are non- refundable”⁵³.
• A free group. “AI Money Lab” on Skool shows 93,065 members⁵¹.
• A $69-a-month group. “AI Profit Boardroom” showed 3,390 members on 10 October at $69 a month, presented as reduced from $99. Its page says “Boardroom members are PROFITING from my personal $300K/month AI tech stack” and offers a 7-day refund and a conditional 30-day guarantee⁴⁹. The owner’s own blog gives the normal price as $110 and says members who join at $69 keep that rate⁵².
• A $149-a-month group. “The SEO Elite Circle” shows 703 members at $149 a month, says “Steal the strategies that made us 8 figures” and warns “Prices going up at 700 members”⁵⁰.

As an illustration only: if every listed member paid today’s advertised price, that would be about $234,000 and about $105,000 a month (our sums: 3,390 x $69 and 703 x $149). The real figure is unknown. The pages advertise locked-in rates and price rises, so members pay different amounts, and the counts may include staff and non-paying members⁴⁹⁵⁰⁵².

The Boardroom’s Skool page shows 128 member reviews averaging 4.9 out of 5⁴⁹. Reviews say whether members are satisfied, not what they earn; we found no data on members’ earnings. A page titled as a review on the group’s own blog is written by the owner: “I run the community myself”⁵².

We found no proof of the €120,000 a month or $150,000 a month figures in the tweet, and the tweet says “Imagine” rather than stating them as the author’s income¹. Agency revenue appears only as “Over 7 Figures” in an interview title⁵⁴.

Suppliers to newcomers. Each is paid whether or not the newcomer wins a client.

The referral payments mean that “how to start an SEO agency” content can earn its author money whatever happens to the reader. At 40%, one HighLevel referral is worth about $39 to $199 a month (our sum)⁵⁷.

The upside

Payment-verified businesses

TrustMRR is a site where owners connect their payment account so that revenue can be read directly. It reads the payment provider “using a read-only API key” (a password that lets it see the account but not change it) and recomputes the figures itself; it says “discrepancies of up to 30% can occur”³⁷. As far as we could see, nobody outside TrustMRR checks the numbers. Owners choose to list, so these are winners, not a sample. Figures are revenue, not profit. All three were read on 10 October 2026.

“Monthly recurring revenue” (MRR) is the subscription income due each month. “Last 30 days” also counts one-off sales, so it moves more.

Our sums: that is about $2,874 a subscription a month for AEO Engine, $1,559 for Indexsy and $597 for Kraft. We assume one subscription is one client, which the listings do not confirm.

What these show:

• The size in the tweet exists, at least for a month. AEO Engine’s recurring revenue of $160,959 is about €143,600, above €120,000 (our sum)³³⁹⁵.
• That month is a peak. The listing shows AEO Engine’s last 30 days up 178% on the 30 days before, which puts the earlier period near $83,600, and its recurring revenue up 96% (our sums)³³. Indexsy moved the other way: revenue down 19% and recurring revenue down 16%³⁵.
• The AI-fulfilled model is being sold at scale. AEO Engine’s site lists plans at $1,597 and $2,997 a month and says “senior humans set strategy, manage the account” while software does the bulk production³⁴. That is the agency’s own description.
• None lists itself as new. The founding dates entered by the owners are 2018, 2015 and 2020³³³⁵³⁶. The current branding may be newer: a business founded in 2018 is unlikely to have started under an “AEO” name (our inference).
• Lifetime averages are far below the current month for two of the three. All-time revenue divided by the months since the stated founding date gives about $25,600 a month for AEO Engine, $20,700 for Indexsy and $20,300 for Kraft (our sums)³³³⁵³⁶. AEO Engine’s last 30 days are about nine times its average and Indexsy’s about four times; Kraft’s are about half. These sums assume the payment account covers the whole life of each business, which the listings do not say.
• Kraft’s listing offers the business for sale at $425,000 and states an 80% profit margin; both are the seller’s own entries³⁶.
• Indexsy’s founder has about 62,300 followers on X³⁵.

In the first 30 entries of TrustMRR’s marketing category, which lists 1,729 businesses, only three were SEO or web-and-SEO service sellers³⁸.

Self-reported cases

None of these shows payment proof.

• Benas Leonavicius, Lithuania. Reported €126,000 revenue and €106,000 profit for 2024, working mostly alone, with tool costs under $1,000 a year. His first SEO client came from cold calls and email, and growth came after joining Upwork. He names the cycle of chasing clients as the main difficulty. He had been at it a long time: “For more than ten years, I’ve been offering SEO services”, and his first year “was more about learning than earning”⁴².
• Jade Pruett, US. “I’m currently making around $30k MRR, and I can easily keep costs under 30%”, in 2023, two to three years after starting. MRR is monthly recurring revenue. She had worked as an SEO specialist for large publishers and chose one niche, therapists⁴⁴.
• Nick LeRoy, US. Wrote that in his first eight months of full-time freelancing he earned in the five figures a month. He had more than ten years in SEO: “freelancing on the side for ten years gave me a big head start”⁴⁷.
• Chris Dreyer, Rankings.io (lawyers). Reported $79,000 in year one, $300,000 in year two, $700,000 in year three and “just under $300,000 per month” by year six⁴⁵. The 2019 interview gives 15 employees; the site’s profile box, updated since, shows 168 employees and $2.5 million a month. Both are self-reported⁴⁵.
• Marcus Clarke, Searchant. Reported $50,000 to $100,000 a month with about 50 people and 40 clients, after about a year and a half at $10,000 to $20,000 a month⁴⁶.

A widely read list of SEO revenue figures warns against taking such numbers at face value: “many agencies report money they receive for paid advertising campaigns as agency revenue”⁴⁸.

The top tenth and a realistic good result

Where data exists: almost 14% of surveyed freelancers earn over $150,000 a year¹¹, and 12.3% of surveyed agencies take over $200,000 a month¹⁹. Both samples are small.

Our estimate of a good first year for a competent newcomer with no client network: two to five clients at $500 to $1,000 a month, so roughly $1,000 to $5,000 a month before tools and tax. The basis is the Ahrefs price bands (most common for freelancers up to $500, most common overall up to $1,000)⁴ and the low end of BrightLocal’s two-to-ten client range⁸. No first-year data lies behind it. Over two to three years, if clients stay, that moves towards the $46,000 to $58,000 a year middle of the surveys¹¹¹². We found no month-by-month income record from a newcomer to check this against.

Above $10,000 a month solo, every documented case had either years in SEO first⁴²⁴⁴⁴⁷ or a large existing audience. The audience case is FirstIndex, at about $33,000 a month of signed-up revenue; it is self-reported and under one month old⁹¹. Between €50,000 and €100,000 a month sits Searchant, with about 50 people⁴⁶. At €120,000 a month and above, the two documented cases are AEO Engine and Rankings.io, each by its own description an agency with staff and five or more years behind it³³³⁴⁴⁵.

What it takes to compete

Skill you can show. The people above had ranked sites or held SEO jobs before selling⁴⁴⁴⁵⁴⁷. Proof matters because the buyers are sceptical: 30% would recommend their provider⁶.

A way to reach clients that is not cold. Referrals bring in new business for 85% of agencies¹⁸. The offer in the “$500k” tweet was made to a following of about 75,600, and its seller says the first week’s sales all came through X³⁹¹. The most-viewed tweet’s author has about 172,000 followers¹. Without a network or an audience, the documented routes are a marketplace profile and teaching a niche (Step 5); the people who used them describe a slow first year or a build-up of two to three years⁴²⁴⁴.

A niche or a place. Therapists and lawyers in the cases above⁴⁴⁴⁵. US and Canadian clients pay several times what clients elsewhere do⁴.

Time. US local marketers whose clients stay two to three years average about twice as much per client as those whose clients leave within a year ($1,569 against $799)⁸. The solo cases took years to reach five figures a month⁴²⁴⁷.

The version Google permits, and the version that sells. Work that adds something a model alone does not (strategy, technical fixes, links earned without payment) is what Google’s guidance treats as legitimate⁶⁴⁷². But much of the documented money on this page is in links and content volume. Indexsy’s listing prices include “Local Guest Posts: Starting at $90” and “Niche Edits: Starting at $95” (a niche edit is a link added to an existing article)³⁵. AEO Engine’s larger plan includes “60 on-brand SEO/AEO articles per month” and “6 to 10 quality backlinks per month”³⁴. Goldie Agency sells links at $302 to $390²⁶. We did not check how any of them obtains or labels links, and we found no evidence that the strategy-only version earns more or lasts longer. Where a tactic does break Google’s rules, the penalty falls on the client’s site, and Google says the client is responsible⁷². The seller’s risk is clients leaving or asking for refunds after an update. The low-price end is also where clients are least satisfied⁶.

Money. Little: a tool at about €119 to €229 a month²¹, and enough savings to live on while the list of clients grows. In Planable’s data, more than half of one-client agencies were losing money¹⁴.

How to tell early which side you are on:

• Can you name a site you ranked, with numbers to show?
• Do you know ten business owners who would take your call, or a group where you are already trusted?
• After 100 personal approaches, do you have a paying client? The two write-ups we found got none from 172 emails in the first week, and one from 43 sent by someone already running a web agency³⁹⁴⁰. Neither is a clean test.
• Is your first client still paying after six months, and will they refer you?
• If you sell links or pages in bulk, can you say how each is obtained and labelled, and what you will do for the client after a Google update?

If the first two answers are no, the first job is to build proof and a route to clients, not to buy a course or software.

What we did not verify

• The “$500k ARR in like a week” figure and the seller’s own “nearly $400,000 ARR” and “a few dozen clients”. All are statements on X with no payment proof. Refunds, client results and how long clients stay are unknown.
• The €120,000 a month and $150,000 a month figures in the tweet. No proof was found. The images and videos attached to the tweets were not viewed.
• How many members of the two paid Skool groups pay, and at what price. The $234,000 and $105,000 a month figures are an illustration at list price, not an estimate of income. The “$300K/month” and “8 figures” statements are the seller’s own. Whether the refund guarantees are honoured was not tested.
• The fourth tweet’s monthly income. It is the account’s own statement with no proof.
• Base rates. We found no data on what share of people who start selling SEO get any client, the time to a first client, or how many stop. Every survey covers people still in the trade.
• The close rate from a reply to a signed client. No source found.
• The 38% churn figure has no stated sample or method and conflicts with other tenure figures.
• Planable’s method was not read, and its sample is not SEO-only. The AgencyAnalytics and Promethean surveys cover marketing and digital agencies generally.
• The Ahrefs pricing poll is from 2024 or earlier. Its full price-band charts could not be read.
• The Ahrefs link cost data is several years old. No current link price was verified beyond FATJOE and one agency, and we did not check how any named seller obtains or labels its links.
• The Hong Kong company register was not checked for the registration number on Goldie Agency’s site.
• Current win rates for new SEO profiles on Upwork. None found.
• Profit, team size and staff costs for the TrustMRR businesses, and whether each payment account covers the whole life of the business. Founding dates, Kraft’s asking price and its margin are owner-entered. Whether their founders also sell courses or other products was not checked. Only the first 30 of 1,729 marketing listings were read.
• All self-reported cases.
• Fiverr’s commission and payout delay. Fiverr’s payment pages refused us directly and through a reader. A search summary gave 20% and 14 days; we do not rely on it.
• Reddit refused us on both routes, so no Reddit accounts are included. Upwork’s rate pages also refused us; its fee page and rules were read through the r.jina.ai reader.
• Outcomes of Google’s lawsuits over fake listings and reviews, known to us only from a news report of Google’s allegations⁷⁵.
• The penalty amounts under the FTC fake-review rule, and whether the CAN-SPAM maximum was adjusted for 2026. The guessed addresses for a 2026 release returned “Page not found”.
• The outcomes of the FTC’s cases about AI-branded business opportunities.
• UK rules, VAT, EU email rules and tax outside the US.
• EU AI Act labelling duties for AI-written text, Google’s site reputation policy as changed in August 2026, and the FTC’s proposed changes to its Business Opportunity Rule were looked at but are not covered here⁷¹⁸⁵⁸⁸.
• The current share of Google searches that show an AI summary. The Pew data is from March 2025.
• Several pages (Ahrefs, Backlinko, SE Ranking, Search Engine Journal, Promethean, AgencyAnalytics, FATJOE, Rankability, some FTC pages and the case interviews) were read through a tool that summarises, so short quotes from them should be re-opened before publication. Indie Hackers, Pew, EUR-Lex, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and FTC pages were read through the r.jina.ai reader after direct fetches failed. Clutch was read through the Wayback Machine. Tweets were read through api.fxtwitter.com.

Sources

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35. TrustMRR, Indexsy listing, https://trustmrr.com/startup/indexsy-consulting-ltd. Updated 2026-10-10. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
36. TrustMRR, Kraft Agency Limited listing, https://trustmrr.com/startup/kraft-agency-limited. Updated 2026-10-10. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
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77. FTC, Pointbreak Media, first release, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/05/ftc-action-halts-deceptive-robocalls-aimed-small-business-owners. 2018-05. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through r.jina.ai.
78. FTC, Pointbreak Media, judgment release, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/05/ftc-disconnects-pointbreak-media-robocall-scheme-defendants. 2019-05-15. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through r.jina.ai.
79. EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, consolidated text, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:02005L0029-20220528. 2022-05-28. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through r.jina.ai.
80. FTC, Endorsement Guides: what people are asking, https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking. Date not captured. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through r.jina.ai.
81. FTC, CAN-SPAM Act compliance guide, https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business. The page’s edit note says January 2024, but it carries the 2025 penalty figure. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through r.jina.ai.
82. Stripe, pricing, https://stripe.com/pricing. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
83. US Internal Revenue Service, self-employment tax, https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/self-employment-tax-social-security-and-medicare-taxes. Reviewed 2026-06-27. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
84. Pew Research Center, clicks when an AI summary appears, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/. 2025-07-22. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through r.jina.ai.
85. Goodwin, EU AI Act transparency obligations, https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/08/alerts-technology-dpc-eu-ai-act-transparency-obligations-now-in-force. 2026-08-03. Secondary.
86. FTC, Air AI proposed settlement, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/03/air-ai-its-owners-will-be-banned-marketing-business-opportunities-settle-ftc-charges-company-misled. 2026-03-24; complaint release 2025-08-25. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
87. FTC, Operation AI Comply, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-announces-crackdown-deceptive-ai-claims-schemes. 2024-09-25. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
88. FTC, proposed changes to the Business Opportunity Rule, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-proposes-rule-changes-new-rule-deter-deceptive-earnings-claims-multilevel-marketers-money-making. 2025-01-13. Read at source on 2026-10-10; later status from a law-firm article (secondary).
89. UK Companies House, company name search, https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/search/companies?q=%22goldie+agency%22. Read at source on 2026-10-10. Not used on this page.
90. FirstIndex, service site, https://firstindex.co/. Undated. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
91. Josh Pigford (@Shpigford), posts of 2026-09-21 to 2026-10-07: https://x.com/Shpigford/status/2102054681358782969, https://x.com/Shpigford/status/2106102464957268291, https://x.com/Shpigford/status/2106488386529927224, https://x.com/Shpigford/status/2107154404919198096, https://x.com/Shpigford/status/2107222156841246852, https://x.com/Shpigford/status/2107776311867453648 and https://x.com/Shpigford/status/2107835511855366279. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through api.fxtwitter.com. The TrustMRR check is our own: the addresses trustmrr.com/startup/firstindex and /first-index returned “not found” on 2026-10-10.
92. FTC, “FTC Publishes Inflation-Adjusted Civil Penalty Amounts for 2025”, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/02/ftc-publishes-inflation-adjusted-civil-penalty-amounts-2025. 2025-02-11. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through r.jina.ai.
93. FTC, Pointbreak Media refunds release, https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2020/08/ftc-sends-refund-checks-totaling-more-700000-small-business-owners-defrauded-deceptive-robocalls. 2020-08-18. Read at source on 2026-10-10 through r.jina.ai.
94. SE Ranking, SEO pricing survey (260 agencies), https://seranking.com/blog/seo-pricing/. 2024-12-13, updated 2026-02-23. Read at source on 2026-10-10.
95. European Central Bank, euro foreign exchange reference rates, https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml. 2026-10-09. Read at source on 2026-10-10.

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