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Surfer SEO dominated search by having 3,000 affiliates write review articles
“Out of these 3000 affiliates Every single one created Surfer SEO review, targeting keyword surfer SEO review, which made us really dominate the SERPs with the message that we wanted, because we, they are our affiliate.”
Un-tracked organic halo traffic lowers Surfer's effective affiliate cost to 15-20%
“If you consider that not everyone is really following the affiliate links, you got a lot of press, you got a lot of reviews, but not every single person is using the affiliate link, so you can consider impact of affiliate marketing two times bigger than the co…”
SaaS companies can avoid partnership billing friction by using affiliate structures
“And affiliate marketing is a great help in here, because you can avoid, this is actually a good tip, you can, Remember this one. You can leave behind all of these billing issues, bundling, pricing, and stuff. If you have the affiliate setup already done, becau…”
Successful SaaS partnerships require matching legal and operational agility speeds
“It's not about looking for specific answers, there's no good or bad answers, it's about finding a match. So, if you do the same, if you are both legal heavy, that's okay, it will work. If you are both agile, kind of YOLO development, that's also fine. But if t…”
Surfer SEO scrapped a fully built Semrush integration over legal terms
“We had everything ready, I can tell you. The design was done, ah, the product was done, everything was ready, and we had to turn it down, just because the terms and the legal stuff, we couldn't accept it.”
Surfer's Writesonic integration generated trials but zero conversions due to pricing
“Jasper costs similar amount as Surfer, while Ritesonic is a few times cheaper. And, well, they bring the leads, they got the trial, and no conversion. So, well, it didn't work because of the pricing.”
Surfer SEO caps expenses at 40% of recurring revenue
“We try to spend no more than 40% of the recurring revenue, so we have this pillow that will help us through hard times when they come”
Surfer SEO has never had a month of decelerating revenue growth
“Sometimes it was even 20% month to month, and we have never experienced a month that was slowly, slower growing than a month before.”
Surfer SEO launched its affiliate program with a 30% recurring commission
“We started with paying 30% recurring commission.”
Surfer SEO manages 3,000 affiliate marketers with a single part-time employee
“And as you can see right now, 3000 affiliate marketers. So we partner with 3000 affiliate marketers. A single half-time person is managing this, ah, this whole, ah, process.”
Surfer SEO built and launched its Jasper integration in 28 hours
“28 hours later, we've managed to introduce the integration to the market that was really doing great.”
Only one of Surfer SEO's 20 product integrations actually performed well
“We've did, like, 20 integrations, and only one is really doing great.”
Tracked partnership commissions generated $3.5M for Surfer SEO last year
“As you can see, three point half million last year, it was over 30% of our revenue in total at Surfer. And it was all brought only by commissions that were tracked.”
Surfer SEO bootstrapped after VCs delayed a six-figure check
“We had the term sheet, but in the end it wasn't finalized just because we didn't receive the money. And in the meantime, we started selling early access subscriptions that gave us this initial boost of cash.”
How a Facebook group ban helped launch Surfer SEO
“I was commenting on Facebook groups, and so on, but actually, I got a ban for self-promotion on one of the biggest SEO groups. Which one? SEO Signals Lab. SEO Signals Lab. That was fun. And through that ban I got known Stephen Kang, who is the owner of that gr…”
Surfer SEO pays a 30% recurring commission to affiliates
“It's 30% recurring commissions, so they are really into selling our product.”
Surfer SEO reached $3M ARR without a dedicated sales team
“No, no sales team. Oh, yeah, that's a good moment. I'm looking for a super professional sales, head of sales. So, yeah, no sales, and we would love to start it.”
Surfer SEO generates $25K MRR from affiliates, paying out $8K
“Monthly recurring revenue, 25 K, or maybe this is how much they generate, so a third of that is how much we pay, so slightly less than 10 K USD we pay every month. Yeah, that's correct. 10. Yeah. We can say eight, 8000 us dollars.”
Keyword Surfer Chrome extension has over 200,000 daily active users
“So we released a free SEO tool, Chrome extension that is used by over 202 150,000 people. Every day”
Surfer SEO built its Keyword Surfer extension in two weeks
“There was super popular keywords everywhere extension that become paid. And in a two weeks from that point, we released our to fill the gap of a free extension that shows the search volume of a keyword.”
Surfer SEO's customer lifetime value is approximately $800
“Yeah, LTV is like 800 dollars, I think. Yeah, it is 800 dollars in LTV, and if you calculate an ROI of an ad it will be 10 bucks.”
Surfer SEO focuses on on-page content gaps rather than backlinks
“Like these tools are focused more on keyword research and on backlinks analysis, while we are more like a data-driven tool that gathers a lot of information from pages that are ranking the top 10 to tell you whether you are missing something or overusing when …”