Ask HN: SEO offer by big network, ask for 50/50 split of extra revenue

Hi guys,

Let's say I've been offered SEO / ad optimization by a big network. Some of the members of this network currently are amongst the biggest players in my sector of activity. All the sites in the network are very high quality.

The offer is as follow: provide us with historical data about your site (past year or so). We do SEO / ad optimization for you, provide you access with our Google Adsense Premium ads. We keep 50% of the extra revenue compared to the previously mentioned baseline.

Standard offer for such work? My site is young and has plenty of potential, so it will probably still continue to grow in the future (professional SEO or not). I guess their strategy is find new promising sites, help them in the beginning and reap the rewards on the long run..

On the other hand, I currently have no time for this kind of work and for once, it seems that its a serious offer from competent people (not from some SEO spam I receive every week).

Any of you guys have experience with this kind of deal?

3 comments

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barredo 16y ago ↗

Ask yourself: What CTR/eCPM improvement will come from AdSense Premium vs regular AdSense?

Also, ask for a better deal if the website meets X conditions (traffic growth, economic growth) of starting from a certain date.

petervandijck 16y ago ↗

Sounds a little dodgy. A few possible concerns:

- they may "over-optimize" your site, since it is now in their best interest to do so, whereas it may be in your best interest to slightly under-optimize the site and shoot for longer-term growth.

- they probably won't do anything you can't easily do.

- you are giving the keys of the kingdom to the competition?

I don't think this is a standard offer. Worth looking at, but be careful with the details, and make it so that you can stop the deal at any time.

Also, the biggest concern is that they will basically get the rewards of your growth, for free. Even if they don't do anything special, they'll still get 50% of all your growth from now on. Growth that will happen anyways. That's not a good deal, and even if you'd want to work with these people, it would then likely make sense to wait 6 months so you can up your baseline.

Get the details and do some math :)

urbanjunkie 16y ago ↗

It might make sense to think about paying them for any growth that occurs above your currently projected growth - ie not a fixed baseline, but one take takes your current growth rate into account. Harder to agree, but probably fairer.