How to Make Money With SEO: 12 Ways (Beginner to Pro)

You can make money with SEO in two ways: sell your skills to others, or use them to grow your own websites. Client work, freelancing, and an SEO job pay for your time. Your own sites earn from ads, affiliate commissions, products, renting them to local businesses, or selling them.

Neither path is a fast way to get rich. It takes work and patience to make a living from SEO, but it’s one of the most flexible skills you can monetize, whether you want a salary, a side income, or a business of your own.

In this post, you’ll learn 12 ways to make money with SEO, which ones suit beginners, and how to learn SEO from scratch.

12 Best Ways to Make Money With SEO

1. Start an SEO Business
2. Become an SEO Freelancer (Side Hustle)
3. Set up a Blog and Make Money From Ads
4. Set up a Blog and Make Money from Affiliate Sales
5. Build an eCommerce Store and Sell Physical Products
6. Build an eCommerce Store and Sell Digital Products
7. Create and Sell SEO Online Courses
8. Get an SEO Job at an Agency or Company
9. Sell SEO Copywriting Services
10. Sell Productized SEO Services
11. Build and Rent Local Lead Generation Sites
12. Build and Flip Websites

Which way fits you?

Some of these ways pay for your time and need you to keep working. Others build an asset that can earn with less ongoing work, but take longer to pay off. Use this table to shortlist the ones that fit your experience and the kind of work you want:

Way to make money	Active or passive	Experience needed	Time to first income
1. SEO business	Active	Experienced	Medium
2. SEO freelancer	Active	Some	Fast
3. Blog with ads	Passive once it ranks	Some	Slow
4. Affiliate blog	Passive once it ranks	Some	Slow
5. eCommerce store (physical products)	Active	Some	Medium
6. Digital products	Passive once it ranks	Some	Medium
7. SEO courses	Passive once built	Experienced	Slow
8. SEO job	Active (salary)	Beginner (entry-level roles)	Medium
9. SEO copywriting	Active	Beginner	Fast
10. Productized SEO services	Active	Beginner (one skill)	Fast
11. Rank and rent sites	Passive once rented	Some (local SEO)	Medium
12. Website flipping	Active	Experienced	Slow

If you’re a beginner, start with the fast, active options: freelance tasks, productized services, SEO copywriting, or an entry-level job. They pay while you learn, and the experience makes the slower asset-building options much easier later.

1. Start an SEO Business

Website owners are constantly on the lookout for ways they can get new customers and clients. However, increasing traffic to your website isn’t as easy as publishing a few blog posts. As a result, business owners rely on SEO professionals to help generate more search engine traffic.

Once you’ve found some success with your own website or personal projects, you can take this service to clients.

Running an SEO business isn’t for everyone. It can be a ton of work because, besides doing SEO work, you also need to manage client relationships and expectations, which can take up much of your time.

That being said, here are some of the pros and cons of starting your own SEO business.

Pros of running an SEO business:

• Consistent monthly retainers from clients
• The revenue ceiling is very high
• The SEO industry only continues to grow
• You can work remotely

Cons of running an SEO business:

• Client management can be very time-consuming and stressful
• The margins can be slim when you factor in staff and overhead
• You’ll need other skills like hiring, team management, and more
• Competition is constantly rising

How to Find Clients For Your SEO Business

There are various ways you can generate leads and find clients for your SEO business.

If you’re maintaining a regular SEO blog, you could have leads reach out to you. However, there are a few lead-generation tactics you can employ as well:

• Reaching out to businesses via LinkedIn and cold email
• Target companies who are spending money on advertising but not ranking organically
• Forming partnerships with graphic design firms and other agencies
• List your company on online marketing directories
• Use your SEO skills to rank your company high in the local search results

Ultimately, your success running an SEO business depends on the results you deliver for your clients.

How much money can you make?

With an SEO business, there’s no limit to how much your agency can earn. You’re limited by the number of clients you have and the size of your team.

According to Credo’s SEO pricing survey, half of SEO providers set a monthly retainer minimum under $3,000, and 15% set it at $5,000 or more.

2. Become an SEO Freelancer (Side Hustle)

If you like the idea of running an SEO business but creating a full-fledged agency is too much work, then consider becoming an SEO freelancer.

If you’ve found a specific part of SEO that you enjoy, you can offer your services for this specific skill.

For example, maybe you’ve found that you enjoy broken backlink building. You could partner with an agency or webmaster and offer this specific service. Or use a freelancer platform like Upwork and bid on SEO jobs for that skill.

The best thing about freelancing is that it can be done part-time. You can pitch your services, bid on job boards, and take on overflow agency work when you have the time.

As a part-time freelancer, there is a range of different types of projects you can take on, like:

• Keyword research
• SEO audits
• Onsite content optimization
• Backlink building

How much money can you make?

As a freelancer, your rates depend on your experience and results. You can price per hour, per project, or per month. According to Credo’s survey, SEO providers worldwide charge an average of $112.22 per hour, and SEO agencies in the United States charge an average of $147.93 per hour. Expect to start lower while you build a portfolio.

3. Set up a Blog and Make Money From Ads

If you have solid SEO skills, you can make money from a blog that gets a ton of traffic. One of the easiest forms of blog monetization is paid advertising.

Some of the most popular forms of paid ads include:

• Google AdSense and premium ad networks like Mediavine and Raptive
• Custom banner ads
• Sponsored content

To find success as a blogger, you need a niche that gets a high volume of traffic and doesn’t have extreme levels of competition. For example, personal finance is one of the most competitive niches online. Even if you’re an SEO wizard, it will take a long time to build up the authority necessary to compete.

You need to find a niche that gets a solid amount of traffic but isn’t insanely competitive. With solid SEO experience, you’ll be able to uncover niches that possess these two qualities.

Monetizing a blog via paid ads is one of the most passive models, since you’re paid on the volume of traffic. It is also the model most exposed to AI Overviews, because informational searches are the ones Google now answers on the results page (more on this below).

Keep in mind to make money off SEO with advertising, you'll need a very high volume of traffic. If the niche you want to build a website in is limited in traffic, you may need to monetize in other ways.

How much money can you make?

Ad income depends on your traffic and your RPM, the revenue you earn per 1,000 page views. For example, at a page RPM of $3, 100,000 monthly page views earn about $300 a month. Premium networks usually pay higher RPMs than AdSense but have entry requirements: Mediavine’s Journey program, for example, accepts sites with over 1,000 monthly sessions.

4. Set up a Blog and Make Money from Affiliate Sales

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. It is competitive, but as someone with actual SEO skills, you have a much greater chance of success.

There’s no limit to how big of a site you can build as an affiliate. You have single-person blogs, all the way up to massive sites like NerdWallet and Wirecutter, which are large-scale affiliate sites.

With affiliate marketing, you promote high-quality products in exchange for a commission when someone decides to buy through your affiliate link.

There are SEO affiliate programs with products related to SEO and digital marketing, but there are also affiliate programs for all niches.

After selecting the products to promote, the next step is to write the right type of content. The most common form of affiliate posts is “best of” posts and “product reviews”.

When a searcher types these keywords into Google, they’re in the buying phase. So, if they click over to your site, there’s a good chance they will buy from your link.

Once an affiliate site ranks, it can earn with much less ongoing work than client services. However, you are reliant on organic traffic and vendor payouts (which can change).

How much money can you make?

Making money with affiliate marketing has a wide range of income potential. What you earn depends on your traffic, the commission rates of the programs you join, and how many readers buy.

5. Build an eCommerce Store and Sell Physical Products

If you know SEO, you can use search engine optimization to earn money from your store. Organic search engine traffic can be an incredibly reliable source of traffic.

You can conduct keyword research to find keywords your audience will use to find your product. For example, if you find a keyword like “waterproof backpack” that has a high volume and low competition, this could help to verify there’s a demand for the product.

Building an eCommerce store has all kinds of benefits like:

• It’s a legitimate business model with a very high income ceiling
• You have full control over your brand
• The eCommerce market only continues to grow year after year

However, in building an eCommerce brand, there are a ton of additional steps involved in the process:

1. Creating the product (or sourcing dropshipping products)
2. Selling initial products and getting feedback
3. Improving products and handling shipping
4. Scaling your store

How much money can you make?

There’s no fixed limit to what an eCommerce store can earn, but SEO is only one part of it. Your profit depends on your margins, your product, and how many of your visitors buy. Organic traffic helps because you don’t pay for each visit.

6. Build an eCommerce Store and Sell Digital Products

If you don’t want to get into the physical product business, you can sell digital products using the same methods as above.

Digital products can be advantageous since the margins can be much higher. With digital products, you also have the opportunity to test different products and different angles until you find something that sells.

The most common form of a digital product is an eBook, but you have all kinds of digital products you can explore, like:

• Online courses (mentioned below)
• Recurring membership
• Digital templates
• Music and Audio
• Stock photography

How much money can you make?

The amount you can earn selling digital products is just as variable as in other areas. Because each extra sale costs you almost nothing to deliver, most of the revenue from organic traffic is profit.

7. Create and Sell SEO Online Courses

Once you’ve been practicing SEO for a while and have gotten tangible results, you can package up your knowledge and sell it as a course.

Keep in mind that the SEO space is flooded with low-quality courses, so if you create a course, you’ll want to ensure it’s something original and unique. If it’s backed by tangible results that you’ve been able to create for yourself or clients, even better.

Another consideration is building an audience before you start selling your course. Sure, you can take advantage of paid traffic channels, but it can be a while until you turn a positive ROI, especially with no audience.

Instead, spend time sharing your SEO knowledge for free via your blog, YouTube channel, and Instagram before you launch an online course.

There are a variety of approaches you can take to monetize your existing SEO knowledge.

For example, if you don’t want to spend time building an entire course, you can create something smaller, like a paid newsletter, Slack channel, or private Facebook group.

You can also create a course that addresses a smaller subsect of the market. So, instead of creating an all-in-one SEO course, you could create a course on a single aspect of SEO, like link building, onsite SEO, or speed optimization.

SEO Certification Courses can be extremely lucrative since you only have to create the course once, and you can sell it repeatedly.

How much money can you make?

The amount you can earn from online courses varies widely. It depends on the size of your audience, your price, and the quality of your course.

8. Get an SEO Job at an Agency or Company

Many people who get into SEO don’t dream about working for an agency. But this can be an incredible way to get paid to grow your skills and learn things you wouldn’t come across on your own.

Typically, when you work for an agency, you’re going to be taking on much larger projects than you would as a freelancer.

By working with enterprise-level clients, you’ll be able to learn how large-scale projects are executed from start to finish while picking up new skills along the way.

For example, with large client projects, you’ll learn things like technical SEO, how to do deep dives into website analytics, and even presentations and pitching.

When you work with an agency, you can test and learn what’s working today using the resources of an existing company and its clients. Plus, you’ll get a consistent salary, which usually won’t happen when you start freelancing.

The only real drawbacks are the long hours and generally chaotic environment of working for an agency, and working for someone else might not be what you’re looking for.

How much money can you make?

The amount you’ll earn depends on your experience and role. According to Indeed, the average base salary in the United States is $81,592 per year for an SEO specialist and $89,768 per year for an SEO manager. Entry-level roles pay less. See our guide to digital marketing salaries for more roles.

9. Sell SEO Copywriting Services

The term SEO writer used to mean writing content optimized for search engines. Writers who classify themselves as SEO writers are more generalists and don’t have a specific niche.

The drawback is that it’s difficult to charge higher rates, and you’ll get lumped in with the rest of the generalist writers pitching the same services.

Instead, you’ll want to brand yourself as a niche writer who has advanced knowledge of SEO. Not only can you write authoritative content that’s geared towards a specific niche, but you also know how to optimize it properly for search engines, include relevant keywords, and more.

The benefit of selling SEO copywriting services is that you can work from anywhere in the world. All you need is a laptop and a WiFi connection. There’s also a ton of demand for writers since nearly every website needs a continuous content stream.

As an SEO writer, you can either work for a handful of agencies and produce content for their clients or pitch business and website owners directly, offering your skills.

Unless you love writing, SEO copywriting probably isn’t something you’ll want to stay in forever since you’re naturally limited by how much you can write.

How much money can you make?

The rates for SEO copywriting vary widely with your experience and niche. Writers with expertise in a specialized, high-value niche can charge far more than generalists, which is why niching matters.

10. Sell Productized SEO Services

As you know, tons of different tasks must be accomplished to execute an SEO campaign effectively. It’s a lot for a single person, let alone a team, to accomplish.

Some common tasks include:

• In-depth site audits
• Backlink building
• Content writing
• Outreach for social media
• Technical Optimization
• Keyword research
• And more

If you’ve mastered one part of this process, you can package it as a productized service: one clearly defined task, such as an SEO audit or a local listing setup, for a fixed upfront price.

For example, SEO agencies and individual website owners are always on the lookout for quality contractors to help execute successful SEO campaigns.

You can sell productized services on your own website, but freelance marketplaces are the easiest place to start. One of the most effective is Fiverr. Fiverr is commonly overlooked since it’s generally associated with cheaper work. However, you can offer upsells on your packages and earn decent money for the tasks you complete.

The key to earning a solid income on Fiverr is establishing yourself as an expert in a given area. You want to choose a task that you know you can execute and get solid ratings from your customers.

Fiverr (and other freelance marketplaces like Upwork) can be very beneficial, for example:

• You can quickly rise in the rankings if your work is good
• You can deliver work fast and get paid fast
• There’s a near-endless amount of leads you can tap into

However, there is a limit to how much you can earn on Fiverr. It’s a great place to start your SEO career, but probably not a platform you’ll want to use forever.

How much money can you make?

Gigs on Fiverr often start at low prices. You earn more by offering upgrades and higher-level packages, and by moving repeat buyers to larger projects once they trust your work.

11. Build and Rent Local Lead Generation Sites

Rank and rent is an SEO business model where you build a website for a local service, rank it on Google, and then rent it to a local business.

For example, you build a site targeting “emergency plumber in Denver”, rank it with local SEO, and send the calls and form leads to a local plumber. The plumber pays you a monthly fee for the site, or a fee for each lead.

Pros of rank and rent:

• You own the website, so you keep the asset if a client leaves
• Local keywords are usually less competitive than national ones
• Once a site ranks and is rented, it needs little ongoing work

Cons of rank and rent:

• You do the SEO work up front, before anyone pays you
• You still need to find a business willing to rent the site
• The site itself isn’t a business with its own Google Business Profile, so it competes mainly in the regular results, not the map pack

How much money can you make?

It depends on how much a customer is worth in that industry and city. Services with expensive jobs, such as roofing, plumbing, or legal services, can pay more per lead than low-cost services.

12. Build and Flip Websites

Website flipping means building (or buying) a website, growing its traffic and revenue with SEO, and then selling it. Buyers pay for the income the site already makes, so the goal is to prove steady revenue before you sell.

You can sell websites on marketplaces such as Flippa and Empire Flippers, or through a broker. Websites typically sell for a multiple of their monthly profit, so every extra dollar of monthly profit adds to the sale price.

Flipping suits experienced SEOs. You need to know how to pick a niche, grow traffic, monetize it, and document everything a buyer will check, such as traffic sources and income history.

How much money can you make?

Your profit is the sale price minus what you spent building or buying the site. Sites that depend on a single traffic source or a single income stream usually sell for less, because they’re riskier for the buyer.

Why Is SEO a Great Way to Make Money Online?

There are all kinds of ways to make money online, like building an eCommerce store, growing a popular blog, selling services and affiliate products, eBooks, selling online courses, and more.

However, you won’t make any money with these methods if you don’t have traffic. One of the best ways to get quality traffic to your site is through SEO.

Search engine optimization is a foundational skill that can help to unlock your success online. Knowing how SEO works and how to create and implement an SEO strategy can make you invaluable to business owners and any personal websites you launch.

You’ll understand things like:

• Why SEO matters
• How organic traffic can change your business
• How to target the right kind of visitors
• Why not all traffic is good traffic
• How to optimize for search intent and rank even higher in the search engines

Once you learn the principles and concepts of SEO (highlighted below), you can apply what you’ve learned to several different niches and types of business. You can even freelance to get paid to further learn and apply your skills in the new world.

Can You Still Make Money With SEO in 2026?

Yes, but where the money is has shifted.

Google now answers many searches with AI Overviews, and people click less when they see one. A Pew Research Center study found that users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits, compared with 15% for users who didn’t see one.

This affects the ways to make money with SEO differently:

• Hit hardest: blogs that answer informational questions and earn from ads (way 3), because those are the searches AI Overviews answer on the results page.
• Less affected: client services, SEO jobs, local SEO, and sites that rank for commercial searches, such as product and service queries, where people still want to compare options and buy.
• New demand: businesses now want to show up in AI answers as well as in Google’s results. Helping them improve their visibility in AI platforms is a growing service for SEOs.

Will AI replace SEO? AI tools already speed up tasks like keyword research, content drafts, and technical checks. But businesses still need someone who understands search to decide what to do, check the output, and get results. The SEOs who use AI tools well are the ones clients and employers want.

How To Learn SEO And Become An Expert?

SEO isn’t that difficult to learn. All it takes is setting aside the time necessary to learn the various SEO concepts and best practices. The great thing about SEO is that you can start offering your services and getting paid on your path to becoming an SEO expert.

Benefits of Learning SEO

• It can increase search engine traffic and rankings for your websites, along with client sites.
• You won’t be dependent on third-party SEO agencies to help grow your own business.
• If you decide to outsource, you can make better decisions about who to work with.
• You can get a job with an SEO or marketing agency to further grow your skills as you learn.

Nearly every online business can benefit from some SEO strategy. Even if you have a traffic source that’s working great, you can add SEO to make the business more resilient while increasing revenue.

The SEO learning curve will be steep initially since there are so many new concepts to learn. But, once you pass this initial phase and start implementing, everything will become much easier.

Here’s a quick look at the path you can follow to learn SEO:

1. Understand how the search engines work and how they index content
2. Learn basic search engine marketing concepts and ideas
3. Understand what the search engines are looking for (i.e., quality content that searchers love)
4. Learn how to optimize content the right way
5. Learn what offsite SEO factors are important and how to achieve these metrics
6. Choose the right SEO tools to help you make data-based decisions
7. Put what you learned to work with websites and other projects

If you want this process explained in-depth, check out the Complete SEO Course.

Once you go through the path above, use the methods in this guide to start making money with your SEO skills and knowledge.

Make Money With SEO FAQ

Can you really make money with SEO?

Yes. SEO is a paid skill that businesses hire for, as employees, freelancers, and agencies. You can also use it to grow your own websites and earn from ads, affiliate commissions, products, or by renting or selling the sites.

Can a beginner make money with SEO?

Yes, but not on day one. Learn the basics first, then start with work that pays while you learn: single SEO tasks for clients, productized services on Fiverr or Upwork, SEO copywriting, or an entry-level SEO job. Building your own sites takes longer to pay off, so it works best as a side project.

How much money can you make with SEO?

According to Indeed, SEO specialists in the United States earn an average base salary of $81,592 per year and SEO managers $89,768. Freelancers and agencies charge an average of $112.22 per hour worldwide, according to Credo. Income from your own websites has no fixed range, because it depends on your traffic and how you monetize it.

How long does it take to make money with SEO?

Client work and jobs pay as soon as you land them. Your own websites usually take much longer, because new sites need time to rank before they earn anything.

Is SEO still worth learning?

Yes. AI Overviews have reduced clicks for some types of searches, but businesses still need search traffic and now also want visibility in AI answers. See the section above on making money with SEO in 2026.

Key Learnings

As you can see, there is a wide range of opportunities to offer your services and make money with SEO.

By taking the time to learn SEO, you’ll be learning a valuable skill that can be used to start your own business or bring value to any online project you’re a part of. You can easily answer the question: how do SEO companies make money?

Remember that you don’t have to be an expert to make money with SEO. Once you’ve mastered the basics, have applied what you’ve learned, and have some results, you can start earning money.

There are a variety of ways you can learn how to make money online with SEO. Some of the easiest ways to start include pitching your freelance SEO services on sites like Upwork, offering productized services on Fiverr, or selling your freelance SEO copywriting services.

With more results and experience behind you, you can further level up your skills by getting an SEO job at an agency or company or starting your own business.

If you prefer the SEO services approach, you can form your own SEO agency and start taking on your own large-scale clients.

Your final option with SEO is to create your own customer-facing website or business. The most common approaches include the following:

• Creating a popular blog via organic traffic and monetizing via ads and affiliate sales
• Creating a popular website ranking in the search engines and selling related physical or digital eCommerce products
• Creating a popular SEO blog and teaching what you’ve learned (and what works) with an SEO course
• Building local lead generation sites to rent, or growing websites to sell

SEO is a valuable skill that can help you land a new job, create a business, or even earn a solid side income. The time and energy you put into learning SEO will pay dividends for years to come.