Unvertise / For agencies / Vs hiring in-house
White label vs hiring in-house.
Sometimes hiring is the right answer. Here’s the math so you can tell when.
The money.
| Hire in-house | White label (me) | |
|---|---|---|
| Base cost | $78,760 a year median pay for marketing specialists, about $6,563 a month, before payroll tax, benefits and tools (BLS, May 2025) | From $550 a month per client site. Every tier. |
| Tools | You buy the crawler, rank tracker and keyword tool seats | Included |
| Ramp | Recruiting, onboarding, learning your clients | Starts with an audit the first week |
| Commitment | A salary, whether you sell SEO this month or not | Month to month, per client |
| When it breaks even | Roughly when you have enough SEO clients that the per-site cost passes a full salary plus tools. At $990 a site, that’s around 7 clients on base pay alone, more once you add payroll tax and tools. | |
When you should hire instead.
When SEO is most of what you sell, you have a steady book of a dozen or more SEO clients, and you want the expertise to live inside the company. At that point a hire pays for itself, and I’d tell you that on the phone.
Until then, white label lets you sell it without carrying a salary for it.
Bring your account count.
Wholesale rates get better with volume, and the bigger win is less of your time per account every month.