As with any way to earn money online, there are tons of distraction.

But here is the kicker, most of these distractions cost money.

BIG MONEY.

For example, for the better version of Ahrefs, you are going to pay about $199/mo (which is plumb stupid)

So in this email, I want to go over 4 things you are wasting money on as an SEO.

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Expensive Tools

I mentioned this earlier but one of the biggest culprits in this SEO money wasting game is Ahrefs.

Now, before I rip this company a new one, I still use Ahrefs everyday. They are worth every penny they charge.

But with that said, they do not do small and middle of the road SEOs any favors.

They charge an arm and a leg for information that is not that proprietary. If you were to get the better version of their tool, you will pay over $2,000 a year for it.

That is wild.

But in reality, you can get along just fine without a tool like SEMRush or Ahrefs.

In fact, I’ve built and sold websites for over 5 figures and didn’t even have an active subscription to Ahrefs.

So what am I using?

Recently, I’ve been using LowFruits.io, KeywordChef, and UberSuggest.

I’ve recently been testing out Keysearch.co as well, but don’t have a defenitive take with them yet.

The point here is to take a ProfitFirst approach to your finances, and if your business cannot afford a tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs, find something else that can do 80% of the job and scale later.

This is true for the multitude of plugins you could buy as well.

Bad SEO Strategy

This is insanely costly but executing a terrible strategy to get a website and it’s money pages to rank will cost you more than anything.

Why?

Because time is money.

The longer you are working on a project that is simply not performing, the more time and money you will lose.

So how do you determine if a project is not worth yoru time anymore?

Easy… is the project growing? stagnating? dying?

If the project is growing, keep throwing money at it.

If the growth has flatlined and not seeing ups or down in the traffic and revenue, you need to make an gutsy decision to keep with it or not.

In most situations for my sites, if a site start growing sideways month in and month out, I tend scale back production of content and links to that page and began focusing time elsewhere.

If the site is dying and it is not responding to anything I’m doing. I put that site in “maintenance” mode and concentrate on other projects.

This is the toughest one to do because you likely do not want to give up on your baby. But the best way around that is see the website for what it is… a income producing asset. And if it is not producing income, make a call and pull the plug.

Expensive Backlinks

Backlinks have always been important, but I have noticed in the last year or so, that links are getting more and more expensive.

This is because everything is more expensive nowadays.

I always remind members of my private premium community that there is no better backlink you can get than with your own outreach. But that is a lot of time and effort.

Backlink agencies know this and they charge premium prices because of it.

So, set a buget for the amount of money you’d like to spend on links. For a reference, I would set aside about 50% of your budget to build links.

Use that money wisely and get the best bang for your buck without sacrificing quality. The better way to do this is to hire someone off Upwork to source links for you.

Agencies like Whitepress.com, Indexsy.com, and Sirlinksalot.co are good sources but always look for deals and get high DR sites with organic traffic.

Writers Instead of Editors

So AI isn’t going anywhere and one of the biggest expenses I would normally have is paying for content.

But not anymore.

I have largely shifted my budget from creating content to paying editors to edit AI content.

This allows me to create more content faster. Which is always a good thing.

So unless you need a super specific writer on a niche topic, get the AI to write the first draft and edit. You no longer need to pay $0.07 or more a word anymore.

Save that money and use it to get a decent AI tool like Koala.sh or Cuppa.sh, then hire an editor from WriterAccess, Upwork.com or ProBlogger.com.

Thank me later

So now what?

So take it from me, I only know about all these money wasters because I have wasted plenty of money on all of them since I have been in this SEO game.

So learn from my mistakes and get some help and actually DO the darn thing, rather than just reading or listening about it in podcasts and YouTube videos.

What have you wasted money on?

Chat soon,
Chris Myles
Need help? Join my SEO Marketing Mastermind
Or let’s connect on Twitter or YouTube 👇