Monetizing your digital marketing expertise

Columnist Stephan Spencer discusses how you can use SEO and online marketing knowledge to build assets that make money for you, rather than having all the gains go to your clients. I have a theory: the best digital marketing practitioners in the world are not consultants helping their clients get rich. Rather, they are their own clients. Or, if they do have clients, they’ve figured out a way to have them on a performance pricing model in order to share in the client’s upside. How are these rock-stars their own clients, you ask? It could be a range of things — they could be affiliates, “infoproduct” sellers or lead generators who are leveraging digital marketing expertise. Or a combination of the above. One thing is certain: they use their digital marketing knowledge and expertise to make money for themselves rather than helping clients make all the money and in turn getting paid for their time. Dollars-for-hours consulting is a hard slog and doesn’t scale.