Grumpy SEO Guy
What Is, and How to Do Rank and Rent (and a Rant on Affiliate Marketing and Bad Online Business Advice) - Episode 62
This is Grumpy SEO Guy, Episode 62. What is and how to do rank and rent? You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm Grumpy today. I'm Grumpy today because a lot of people have been asking me about an SEO model called "rank and rent," and I'm not actually Grumpy. The people are asking me about it. I'm Grumpy because there seems to be a lot of confusion when it comes to this model. So in this episode, I'm going to explain rank and rent, and I'm going to share with you my experiences trying it many years ago. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started, everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical and based on my experience. This podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. Okay, let's get started. What is rank and rent? Rank and rent is when you rank a website and then you rent spots on the website. Let me give you an example. Let's say you are making a website for a particular service. Like let's say, for example, plumbing, okay, plumbing. So, and by the way, this is just an example, okay? Say you are making a plumbing website and you are doing it in a city like Seattle, okay? So what you would do is you would rank a website for Seattle Plumbers, okay, cool. Now what you would do is you would get Seattle Plumbers to pay you to be listed on your website, okay? So, there's different ways to do this and what some people will do is they will say something like, you know, here's the number one Seattle Plumber or something like that and it's not, are they really the number one or is it just the person that you contacted first or that like is paying you the most, right? Like some random person is not going to know who like the top plumber in Seattle is, okay? By the way, this reminds me of affiliate marketing where people will promote one product as being the best because it pays the highest commission. They're like, we review, like by the way, I'm sure you guys have seen these websites, right? We reviewed all of the blah, blah, blah. This is the number one recommendation and it's like it's not even the best, it just pays the highest affiliate commission and by the way, while we're on the topic, affiliate websites are probably the worst thing on the internet that is not illegal, okay? Like no offense. I know there's a lot of affiliate marketers out there, but like, come on guys and I'm not talking about like if you've got affiliate Amazon links on your site, like that's one thing, whatever. I'm talking about websites that exist only to promote affiliate products that are garbage, okay? And yes, I'm sure the affiliate products that you're selling are not garbage, right? But like, yeah, it's most of them, most of them are garbage. I'm not even going to get in, I should do an episode on this. I actually, ooh, I actually should. Anyways, there are companies that exist solely to offer affiliate products to salespeople. And then there's thousands of websites, probably more, that exist only to promote these garbage affiliate products. And I know we're talking about rank and rent and rank and rent is unrelated. But the similarity that I'm trying to define here is that affiliate products generally get rated based on how much they pay in commission, not based on which one is actually good, okay? So you go to an affiliate website and you got like three products. It's like the number one recommendation. Why is it number one? Is it because it's the best? No. It's because it pays the highest commission. Gross. Anyways, so like that's one way that some people will do rank and rent. They're like the number one Seattle based plumber. And it's like just the guy that you're selling the highest spot to whatever. And on that note, I'm not even sure how you would tell who is like the best because let's be honest, like most reviews online are fake anyway. So saying something is the best because it pays the highest commission is pretty dishonest. But you know, if you're going to go and try and find like the best reviews for something, they're probably fake too. So I don't even know. I don't have an answer to that question. Do whatever you want. I'm not going to tell you how to do it or how not to do it. I'm going to tell you how rank and rent works and then I'm going to tell you what my experiences were anyways. And by the way, affiliate marketing is the worst. So anyways, here's you guys, like I'm not even joking, being in the SEO industry, you meet a lot of affiliate marketers. Okay. Like you actually do because why because affiliate marketers need SEO. Okay. Like so does everybody else. Not everybody, but many people, but like seriously, it's just the ridiculous garbage that I have seen people sell is just what like whatever, whatever, okay, so anyway, I don't know what I'm going to make another episode on affiliate marketing. Okay. Anyways, let's talk about rank and rent. So you've got this website Seattle Plumbers, right? And then you rank it and then you rent spots on it to Seattle Plumbers. So it'll be like the number one spot and the number two spot, the number three spot and you can do it however you want. You can charge more for number one. You can charge everybody the same amount. You can rotate them. It doesn't matter. But that's the point. That's why people refer to it as rank and rent because you are ranking a website and then you are renting positions on that website. Okay. Does that make sense? And now you can do this for like many different industries and I did it. I'll give you a little preview. I did it for five. I did it for five different industries and I'm going to tell you what they are. Okay. Little preview. I had literally zero success. Well, I had zero financial success with it. I got into some very interesting conversations with a couple of people. But preview, and I'll talk about it later, I made literally zero dollars doing rank and rent. So yeah. Okay. Let's talk a little bit more about rank and rent. So I have seen this method posted online, many different places for many different people. And it's the kind of, it's the kind of thing. And by the way, I have, I have shared this. If you, if you look on Reddit, I have made a couple posts about rank and rent because, because people have asked some questions about it. And I want to be honest, you know, but I, I look, look, I'm sure there are people out there that are doing rank and rent successfully. I'm sure there are. Okay. But I feel like it's the kind of thing that you can like talk about online and it sounds really cool. Like if you've never done SEO, if you haven't done anything like this before and you hear about rank and rent, like you, almost assuredly will say that sounds awesome. What a rad idea. I'm going to do rank and rent. Okay. And the people that are talking about it, they get like instant cred because it sounds cool. Oh, rank and rent. I've never thought of that before. That sounds great. Let's do that. Like, like whatever. And I've seen it literally, I think the first time I heard about it was, I think it was close to 10 years ago. Like, like rank and rent is not a new thing. Okay. Anyway, so if you think about it, there are so many different industries that you could do it in. Like, you could probably just make a lot of money. Like theoretically. Okay. Now here's my point. I have never talked to anyone in real life or on the internet who has been successful with it. A couple people claim that they make a lot of money doing it, but like when people make claims on the internet, I'm just like, all right, like whatever, sure, I, okay, I believe you like, yeah. Okay. Uh huh. You're posting this from your mansion because you wanted to take a day away from your yacht and like the, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you know, like every, every like online marketer who is teaching something has like a mansion and like eight Ferraris and like a yacht and five supermodel girlfriends. And like, and it's like, okay, bro, and then they all post all the pictures like in front of their mansions with like a fist full of like hundreds. And they're like, this is how much money I made in five seconds while, you know, taking a shower this morning and my, my robot run company that like powers itself with algorithms makes this money. And it's like, yeah, okay, bro. And then of course, of course that are always selling some nonsense to, right? And if you buy my ebook for $47, you too will learn how to make billions of dollars in five minutes or like whatever. It's like, oh my gosh, do you guys remember like that was, I think that started happening. Like, I remember seeing that like in the early 2000s and I'm sure it still exists. But I have tried to distance myself from that grossness and I'm doing a pretty good job because I haven't even thought about it in a long time, but I'm sure that some of you guys remember that you, by the way, you could probably just like rent. If you were really, really motivated to do this, you could rent a mansion and by the way, on this topic, have you guys, okay, like off topic, I promise we're gonna talk about rank and rent. Anyways, have you seen the YouTube videos where people are like, they're always promoting their like money making secrets, right? And it's always some guy, right? It might be a woman, but it's always some guy in a mansion, right? But by the way, he has probably rented for the day, right? Because like, I feel like if you're a billionaire, you don't make YouTube videos talking about how you're gonna give away your wealth building secrets. You probably just do whatever a billionaire does all day, which is probably not that. I don't know, I'm not a billionaire, I don't know, but it's always, it's always, it's always the same. And they all, they all look the same. I'm sorry. I'm not stereotyping. But yes, I am. I'm stereotyping hard. They always look exactly the same. They always have the same expression. It's like, I don't, I don't know, but like whenever I'm on YouTube and I see these videos, I immediately click away because it's, it's so gross. It's always, it's always the same. It's always the same exact thing. The person is different, but it's always the same. Oh, this is my mansion. Let me take you guys really quick into this room. See, this is my room where I run my business. And now before I tell you what my business is, let me ask you a question. What do you think is the sweetest money making trick on the internet this year? It's, let's shut up. That is such absolute nonsense. But do you know who buys that is like, I think I honestly think noobs, like I think noobs who have like never used YouTube before. And by the way, this is not a recommendation to do that. You should not market yourself that way. If you have an online business because it's gross, okay? But anyways, I feel like the people that buy that are noobs who are like, Ooh, YouTube. What's this? And then they like look for a thing. I don't know what noobs would look for on YouTube, but then they're like, Ooh, YouTube. And then they're like, wait a minute. This guy is getting a, ooh, I want a house like that. Oh man, I wish I had like a supermodel girlfriend, no offense to the, to the women listening. But that's the marketing trope that is always used. I wish I had a supermodel girlfriend. I'm going to buy this guy's book for $47 or you know, however much it costs. But I feel like it usually is, I feel like they're $47. I feel like ebooks are $47. Anyway, I'm going to buy this ebook $47 and I'm going to, I'm going to run my business and it's going to run itself because he's going to tell me the secret software that will run my business for me and I will make so many dollars. And then I bet you it doesn't work. Okay. Let's talk about rank and rent. So rank and rent gives me that kind of vibe. Okay. Like it, it, it causes me to think about people that want to sound smart with something that sounds feasible, but ultimately is substantially more difficult to accomplish than what they said. So here's, here's the thing. I have seen a ton of people talk about rank and rent. I have seen a ton of people sell rank and rent courses in various types of format. Okay. Like, and like whatever, whatever, but I don't actually think that it's as profitable as people want to make it. So I, I don't, I don't know. I'm sure I'm going to get lots of email. I run rank and rent. I make a million dollars a day grumpy us yoga. You don't know what you're talking about. Oh, cool. Like cool. And you know what? Like, I don't even care. I don't even, I don't even, I'm not even going to ask you to show me an example of your rank and rent site. Cause that would be like a violation of, I don't know, you probably wouldn't want to share it anyway. So I would encourage you not to share. Okay. If you have a good rank and rent site that is making you money, I would not share it with anyone that I just would not. Okay. But like, I've never talked to anybody who has successfully done this, except for the people on forums who claim to be successfully doing it. But sometimes it just looks like somebody is lying to sound cool on the internet. And I can't, it's kind of like, you know when chat GPT writes something and you know that it's chat GPT and you can't quite determine why you think it's chat GPT, but you know it's chat GPT. That's what I see when some of these people are like, I make, I make a million dollars to rank. And it's like, bro, no, just, no, like, I don't know, I, I don't know. I'm going to stop complaining for a few seconds to talk about something else now. So no, I'm not anyways. So rank and rent, you understand what it is. You make a website, it's usually a location and then some kind of business, but it doesn't have to be. It could be literally anything. I'm just using that as an example because that's how it is commonly described. So, what's a, what's a, what's another place? I don't want to use the same one as before. Like, um, uh, Boise, there's a random city, Boise carpenters, I don't know. But anyways, you'd rank a website for that. And then you would sell positions on that website to carpenters that live in Boise. And then that's how you make your money. Does that make sense? Like I hope it makes sense. So in other words, the benefit for the buyer is that they don't have to rank their own website because there's already a website that ranks and they're just buying spots on it. Okay. Does that make sense? So they don't have to do SEO for their own website. Your website is already in the first position or whatever. And then they can just buy a place on your website. Okay. Does that make sense? That's how it works. I don't know another way to explain it. So I hope that makes sense. Let me say it one more time in case it does not seem understandable from what I just said. The way Rankin Rent Works is you rank a website and then you sell positions on that website to someone else. They get the advantage of having no more need to rank their own website because they are already listed on that first result. Okay. So somebody searches for Seattle Plumbers and then they see your Rankin Rent website and they click on it and then it says like, number one plumber in Seattle and it's like the guy who's paying you. So that guy is going to get visitors and maybe buyers. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. Okay. Let me tell you about my Rankin Rent experience. I tried it in five different industries and I'm going to tell you what they are. My industries that I picked and I picked them for various reasons which I'll talk about in a minute. I did yoga studios, barbershops, wedding photographers, financial planners and dentists. Okay. Why did I pick those? Well, so most of those have a lot of competition. Okay. Yoga studios or I was living on the West Coast, there were so many yoga studios like half the people you meet are like yoga teachers. Okay. Like there's a lot of yoga studios. Okay. Same thing with dentists. It's a lot of dentists. I don't know if you guys have noticed this but hopefully you visit the dentist often or as often as you need to. Okay. But there's a lot of dentists. Okay. At least in America there's a lot of dentists. I'm not sure in different countries but in America there's a lot of dentists. Okay. Barbershops where I was living was a very appearance focused city and there were a lot of barbershops. Okay. It was very trendy at the time for men in this city to put a lot of effort into their facial hair and their head hair and I don't know what do you call hair that's not facial hair, their hair and their facial hair and their mustaches and their beards and there were a ton of barbershops, old fashioned barbershops, right? Or you can go get like a beer and by the way, is that like a thing in other places? I never, by the way, I shave my head. Those of you that have had meetings with me on Zoom, I shave my head. So I don't have any reason to go to these places and I shave my own head. By the way, fun story. I have told you that if you want to start an SEO agency you need to have some money before you start because you're probably not going to make money for a long time and you need to be very frugal. Okay. Let me tell you a frugal story really quick. I bought hair clippers, the electronic kind and I was, and I started using them to shave my own head. Do you want to know why? Because it's way cheaper to buy them for like, you know, $20 or whatever they cost than to go to a barbershop and have it done once a week or once a month or however often. So being frugal, $20 for multiple years of being able to shave my head or like 15 or 20 or however much it costs per visit multiple times per year, no thanks. Do it yourself. It's cheaper. That's a smart business decision. Actually, it was personal decision, not a business decision because it didn't come out of a business account. But you get the point. Anyways, lots of people paying lots of money to go have these fancy barbershop experiences with the towel and the massage and the beer and whatever, all the things. And I'm like, okay, I bet these people are all in competition with each other. I'm going to try and get some of them. Okay. What else did I say? I forgot. Yoga studios, Dennis, barbershops, financial planners, you might think that there are not very many financial planners, but I got a list of 150 in my city alone, okay? And that wasn't even all of them because not all of them even had like contact information on their website, which was very bizarre, like why would you not have contact information on your website? But the ones that I could get their contact info, I got it from their website. I had like 150 of them, 150 financial planners. I didn't even know that there was that much competition that that many people were financial planners. Anyways, whatever. And then what was the last one that I said, um, wedding photographers. So where I was living at the time, there were a lot of wedding photographers, a lot. I was in a shared office space, okay? And even in my building, there were numerous wedding photographers. I'm just like, I, that's, that's cool, you know, be, that's, I, I don't know anything about it. Anything about wedding photography, but there's a lot of you guys. So anyways, that's why I picked those industries. Um, now somebody is going to say, well, those people don't have money or old blah, blah, blah, whatever. Like, okay, that's cool. But here's the thing. So I made these websites. Okay. I made one for each. And I think I called them, I tried to come up with like clever names, right? It wasn't just like Seattle Plumbers.com or whatever. It was like, um, I don't know. It might have been honestly, like it might have been something like I can't, I truthfully can't remember, because this was like seven years ago that I did this anyways. So I made fancy looking websites. Again, I'm not a web designer, but they were pretty cool looking. Um, I just used pre-made website designs anyways. They were pure HTML, um, that I could easily modify because again, I'm not a web designer. But anyways, so, um, and then I made them and I tried different varieties and I tried all sorts of different pricing. Okay. I think I started at like $7 a month or something and I think I went up to like $197 a month. Like, and I didn't, I didn't, I was, um, what do you call it? Not A/B testing, but like I was, I was modifying variables and like every, like I would, I would offer some people the position for like $7 and some people a position for like 27 or however, like however much I honestly think I went, again, I don't remember because it was a long time ago. Like I went up to $197 per month and then the, all the way down to like $7 per month. And I was like all over the place, but here's the point. Literally nobody was interested. I probably contacted 500 or 600 people, okay, to do this. And literally nobody was interested. The only thing I got was I, I had a very curious conversation with one of the wedding photographers. She emailed back and forth numerous times and she was telling me about her struggles in the industry and the competition and all this other stuff. And, but she wasn't interested in buying a spot on my website. So I was like, well, that's cool. But anyways, yeah, so I'm sure maybe I did something wrong, but I also think that rank and rent, I don't, I don't think that it works how people think it works. Okay. In other words, I don't think you can just easily do a thing like you can make a website. You can rank that website. You can, you know, I don't know, somebody, somebody asked me, they were like, well, did you offer them two free weeks of free leads? Like, no, I didn't. Do you want to know why? Because I get emails all the time and people talk to me on Reddit about what is your business. Tell us what you want. We will send you free leads for, no, you won't, I'm literally, no, no, no, I am so put off by anything that is offering me a free lead that I immediately block that person. So if you're listening to this and you DM me and you say on Reddit, by the way, my username is GrandPSCOGuy and you DM me and you say, "GrandPSCOGuy, tell us about your ideal clients and we will send you free leads for two weeks." Nope, no, you won't because you're blocked, okay, like, anyways, no, I didn't do that because it didn't, it didn't, it didn't, okay, you guys, let's, let's take a step back from the, like, I'm air quoting here, but you can't notice, from the, like, commonly accepted internet business advice, okay, what does everybody tell you on the internet when they're trying to teach you how to do business or something, right? They always, and this was huge in like the 2010s, okay, they're always like, if you give something away for free, people will want to buy from you. And so if you remember in like 2010, everybody had some stupid free ebook on their website, right? And that ebook was offered in exchange for your email address, right? So it's like, enter your email address and get a free ebook, first of all, first of all, if you wanted to give away a free ebook because you're a nice person, you would just put it on your server and let people download it. You wouldn't make them give you an email address for it, okay, why? Because once they get your email address, they're just going to spam you with all their dumb nonsense that they want you to buy, okay? Anyway, by the way, I actually tried to copy that, guys, when I was a beginner, I tried some of this stuff. It was super stupid. I think I made, I had a, it's a whole, it's a whole other thing. I'm not going to go into it. I had a cool free giveaway in exchange for an email address. I think I made like one sale, like whatever, whatever, anyways, giving things away for free does not make anyone want to buy from you. I know that that is common internet business advice. Well, if you give a thing away for free, it makes people want to buy from you. No, I don't think it does. I truthfully don't think it does. Do you want to know what I think? I think when you give something away for free, people are just like, oh, free stuff. They don't care. And it's kind of like, okay, like consider this podcast, right? This podcast is free. So I said, if you really wanted to help people, you would give away your ebook on your own website and just let people download it, okay? You wouldn't like put forth this fake guys of, well, you're getting a free ebook and then, but we're actually using your email address. You know, it's like, no, like this podcast, like, if you want, like, okay, am I good at SEO? I like to think so. And does this podcast help people? I like to think so. And you want to know what? It's free. I don't care. I don't need your email address to listen to this podcast. Like, I don't, I don't even care. I'm trying to help people so they don't get scammed by terrible SEO agencies, okay? Like, I'm not like, give me your email address and I will send you the super secret episodes that they don't want you to know about, like, no, how annoying would that be? That would be, that would be annoying, whatever. Anyways, so again, I'm not, I'm, I'm not saying that like this common advice is wrong. Okay. I feel like the premise of this podcast is that common advice is wrong, okay? But like, I'm not saying it just to be saying it in this case. I actually think that giving away things for free is not a good business strategy in most cases. Now, look, if you are like a baker and you're giving away like free cookies or something to like get people into your store, like, sure, that's like, that's one thing, right? But I don't think that giving away things for free makes people more likely to want to buy from you in the future. I don't. Over a decade of doing internet business for lack of better term, I don't think that's the case. Okay. I don't think that you should do free consulting. If you're an SEO person, I don't think that you should do free consulting. I don't think that you should do free assessments. I don't think that you should do free audits. I don't think you should do any of those things because people are just going to take it and they're never going to contact you again. And unless you want that, like, if you're content literally doing something for free, by the way, if you're giving something away for free, okay, but you're like, hidden plan is that they will come back and buy from you, like, no, that's not, that's, it's not going to go that way. Okay. Like, there are occasions when I will help people for free. Okay. And by the way, do not email me and say, grumpy SEO guy, I heard that you help people for free and I was wondering if you could help me for free? No. Like some lawyers take on cases pro bono, there are sometimes I help people for free. Okay. And I'm, I'm not, this is not an advertisement. I'm just telling you that. Okay. And I help somebody for free because this is what you need to focus on. When I help somebody for free, I'm not expecting anything in return. Okay. I'm helping them because I feel like it. All right. And I say this because I see people on Reddit all the time and probably other places, but honestly, I spend most of my, if I, if I'm, if I'm posting about SEO stuff, I'm probably on Reddit. Okay. Um, I see people all the time that are like, we do a free assessment, DM me, DM me, I will give you a free audit. I am an SEO expert. I will do a free assessment for you, just DM me. It's like, no, no, because, okay, well, I mean, look, do it. I honestly, honestly, I don't care. Like the more, the more people that do free audits, the easier it is for me to get business. Okay. But like, here's the thing, if you're doing somebody a favor, if, if you're doing a free assessment for somebody, do it because you want to do a free assessment for them. Not because you secretly want them to buy from you, because you want to know what happens. Whoever is taking all of those free assessments and I can almost promise you that there are people out there who claim that they want SEO and they go around and they collect free audits. By the way, there's websites that will do an audit for you for free anyway. So like, that's probably what these free audits are doing anyway. Like I would not be surprised if you got a free audit and it was just some website that they like ran a free audit on your site. You know what I mean? Like, you're getting what you're paying for, okay? But like, there are people, I'm pretty sure this happens, that collect free audits and free assessments, okay? And they never buy from, they never, they never buy anything from anyone. They are collecting data, okay? And if it's a free audit, I don't even think that the, like, whatever. But anyways, and if they do buy anything, they are, they are shopping around and buying from the cheapest person, okay? So if your criteria to buy SEO is get as many free audits as possible and then buy from the cheapest person, you're never going to get where you want to be in SEO because that's not going to work for you. I, I often will tell people like early, early on in a meeting, I'll say, look, we are not the cheapest agency out there, we're probably closer to the top, if not the top, just, just talking to me for an hour is expensive, okay, like, if you, if somebody, if somebody quoted you a month's worth of work for what I charge to talk to you for an hour, not even doing anything for you, just talking to you for an hour, I don't, I don't think that were the right choice for you and I also don't think you're going to be happy with that other person. So I am so on a tangent right now. Let's talk about rank and rent again. I haven't really met anybody that has made it work. Oh, I, I, I just, you guys, I just remembered what I was talking about. I was talking about free leads. No, I will not let you be on our website and give you free leads for two weeks because I, I, I just, I'm just not going to do that like, and look, do I think that's the difference between being successful at rank and rent and not being successful in rank and rent? No, I don't think that's a difference because I can pretty much guarantee you that even with free leads, they still wouldn't buy from you. You could send somebody, I don't know what's a lot, 10 leads in that two week period. Sounds like a lot, right? Depending on the industry, right? Of course. I, I don't, guys, I don't think it's going to make a difference. Like honestly, and I know that when somebody offers me free leads, I just think that they're already like doing something like, like that's a weird, that's, that's a weird business proposition. All right. That's like, hey, do you want some free money? Like if somebody on the street came up to you and was like, do you want some free money? I, I'd be like, no, get away from me, like, no, right? Like, do you want free leads? Like what, what kind of shady nonsense and like nobody does anything for free. Okay. Like what kind of shady nonsense am I about to get caught up in with, with this, like, I don't know. Maybe that's just me being cynical because there's so many scammers on the internet. But I don't know. I feel like for a rank and rent episode, I sure have spent a lot of time talking about not rank and rent, but you know what? I think that you've probably learned a lot from this episode. So I hope that it was a helpful episode, but anyways, look, here's my point. I don't think that giving away stuff for free is a good business model because it feels insincere, okay? It feels insincere. You're not giving me this thing to help me. You're giving me this thing since you want something from me. And when somebody wants something from you, it's immediately repulsive. Like, like, gee, okay, let's, let's change topics again. Okay. Well, like, there's a lot, okay. So like here's, here's an example that I think will illustrate that. A lot of, as a mistake typical, I apologize, a lot of men complain that they can't get a date, right? Like, total like distinct topic, but not really, okay? And why? Because relationships are kind of like sales a little bit. Why? Because sales are human emotion, okay? And so are relationships. So look, a lot of guys will complain that they can't get a date. Fair enough. It can be hard and it can be scary to talk to women. Let's be honest. Anybody who disagrees with that is just trying to look cool, okay? Every single guy at some point has been frightened to go up to an attractive woman and talk to her, okay? Or any woman that doesn't even matter, right? But why do you think it is that so many women are repulsed by it? It's because they can tell that the guy wants something. When somebody wants something from you, it's very uncomfortable, okay? So let's go back to business now, right? This isn't a dating podcast. When somebody wants something from you, when a businessman or a salesperson or a company, and they want something from you, it is very unnerving and it makes sense that you would be turned off, okay? Nobody gives anything away for free, okay? Like, I think, say whatever you will about this, say whatever you will about this. But I think that, for example, buying a woman that you've never spoken to before, a drink is probably the dumbest thing you can do. Now the argument could be made on both sides of that, okay? It's different discussion, okay? But look, why? Because it means you want something and now she feels like she has an obligation to at least talk to you. That is very uncomfortable, okay? If a business is trying to give you something, especially if they're collecting your information, here's a free thing, just give us your email address. Or have you ever seen the ones where it's like, here's a free thing, you have to put in your credit card number, but don't worry, we won't charge you for seven days unless you tell us to. No, the reason that you feel uncomfortable is because you're supposed to. That is a weird thing, okay? It's trying to disguise your real intentions. And when somebody tries to disguise intentions, you will feel uncomfortable because you're supposed to, okay? Like, here's a free e-book, just give us your email address. By the way, that's why nobody ever uses the real email address ever for that because they know they're just going to get nonsense, right? So like, it makes perfect sense. That's why that woman that you bought a drink for gave you a fake phone number, okay? Because you made her feel uncomfortable, okay? Just, look, I don't have all the sales answers, especially if I don't have all the dating answers, right? But have you just tried being normal? Like seriously, you guys, have you, have you, have you, I feel like I probably just insulted like literally 80 percent? Guys, I love you, please don't unsubscribe, but anyways. But seriously, stop, stop trying to think of a clever way to do a thing and just do the thing. Like, if you want to do a free assessment, do a free assessment, but don't do a free assessment because you think they're going to buy from you, they're not, okay? If you want to buy a person a drink, buy them a drink, but don't buy them a drink because you think they're going to give you their number and then go on a date with you. And also, don't buy drinks for anybody that you haven't met. That's weird. But anyways, look, like, I don't, I don't know. So of course, I didn't, I didn't give away free leads. And you know what, I don't think that's the reason and I'm sure I'm going to get email from people that's like, well, I did it and the reason it worked is because I gave away free leads. All right, bro, if you have a successful rank and rent process going, I'm very happy for you. That's awesome. I just think that it's all hype and I feel like it's a thing that people love to talk about to sound smart because it sounds like it could be a great idea. But I think the reason that so many people are asking questions about it is because it ultimately doesn't work and they've probably tried it and it didn't work. And I don't know, I mean, I got the rank part down, but literally 500 people in five different industries, zero interest. Somebody's going to say, well, your sample size wasn't large enough, bro, yes, it was, okay, like, if one person had said yes, if one person had said yes, okay, that would have been 0.2%, okay, that would have been a 0.2% success rate. I'm saying because one person out of 500 is 0.2%, okay, but I didn't even get that. Like literally, literally nobody was interested in five different industries of varying costs. I think photographers are crazy expensive, financial planners, some of them are pretty expensive, barbershops cost more than I would think they should and again, that's me, whatever. And then dentist dentists are expensive, okay. And then yoga studios, I don't know about where you live, but where I was living, yoga was very expensive, okay, take whatever you think you should pay for a gym membership and like multiply it by five and that's probably what the yoga studios were charging. So these are places that had money. I suspect that financial planners, there's probably most of them don't make very much money and the couple of them make a ton of money, but it doesn't matter because literally none of them was interested in being on my website. So whatever, whatever, guys, look, if you can do rank and rent, awesome, I am proud of you, but I couldn't and I've never met anybody except for a few people online that are a little bit questionable claiming that they've had success with it, I'm sure that in the right circumstances, you could do it and probably make some money, but like, I don't know. And here's the thing, and I picked different prices, right, $7 up to $197, like, come on. Somebody's gonna be like, well, the $197 was too cheap and you should, like, okay, okay, whatever, okay, that's fine. I don't know. Oh, I forgot to tell you, this episode is very, like, random. This is the other thing that I told you, this is another strategy that you might want to try, okay? When you have your empty rank and rent page, because by the way, it's gonna be empty if nobody's paying you, okay? What you might want to do is give away a couple spots for free, just so it looks like there's interest, okay? Because let's say, for example, you have five places on your thing. You can rent positions one, two, three, four, and five, okay? If they're all empty, like, probably nobody's gonna be interested in it because that looks weird, right? Well, nobody else is doing it. Why should I do it? Instead, give somebody a couple of free months and maybe, like, email them and be like, hey, I'm putting you on here for free, FYI, free business, but don't make it weird, right? And then when you're offering the offer to the other people, there will be, like, one or two places that have been filled, and then they'll say, oh, look, people are interested in this. Maybe I should think about it. There's just, like, what I would do. You don't have to do it that way. I tried it that way, and even doing that, it didn't work, okay? Like, I gave some people some free time on the website because, like, why not, right? Like, because if you're trying to sell, for example, positions, like, three, four, five, maybe put somebody in positions one or two or something. I don't know. That way it looks like the spots are filling up. It creates demand, and it creates scarcity, and it creates scarcity, okay? It creates scarcity. Maybe. I don't know. It didn't for me, but, like, I'm not saying that rank and rent may not work for you. I'm just saying it didn't work for me. Anyway, I'm gonna end this episode now because it's pretty long. If you've done rank and rent, let me know how it worked for you. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe, and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is grumpyseoguy. You can visit the grumpyseoguy subreddit, or you can email me at hello@grumpyseoguy.com. If you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders, because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder, and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks, and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast, because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so at patreon.com/grumpyseoguy. We'll talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about two pieces of controversial SEO advice. [MUSIC]