On Building A High Quality SEO Service With $95K In Revenue
Hello, I’m Fady Soliman, the founder of SiteReq. We are a fast-growing software house. We build intuitive software, starting from websites and mobile applications up to enterprise SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms and integration services.
Not only that, but we also provide digital marketing services like search engine optimization, SEO, advertising, branding, and online awareness.
Our customers vary from entrepreneurs to well-established companies who are looking to see their great ideas implemented into software that makes lives and business easier. Furthermore, we also brand and market their software products online.
We launched mid-2018 with a capital of $25,000. We managed to deliver 4 software products throughout 2019 and 2020. By the end of 2019, we did $64,000 in revenue and by the end of 2020, we managed to reach a revenue of $95,000.
What's your backstory and how did you get into entrepreneurship?
So I used to be a software engineer and I started my career in 2008. I loved designing and building software systems that address real-life problems.
I learned a lot throughout my journey in software development. Not only how to build great software, but also how to solve personal real-life problems through problem-solving skills, logic, and reasoning.
Never stop learning and reading. There’s always something new that your competitors know about, but you don’t.
I realized over time that a good product idea comes if there is a potential need for it. That’s how a good idea can be born into real life and survive.
SiteReq is my first company and I see it as a great gateway for me to put creativity, art, and problem-solving into one place to layout amazing solutions to real-life problems.
Take us through your entrepreneurial journey. How did you go from day 1 to today?
Back in the day when I started my software engineering career, I wasn’t sure enough where this path was taking me.
Am I just going to be a great senior software engineer? Is it just all about promotions into a defined career path?
Over time, I learned not only how to build great software, but also teamwork and how this software product can solve problems for the people using it.
It was quite a challenge to understand what the word “customer” means to a software engineer and how critical it is to solve those problems and bugs reported to us in a short time under a significant amount of pressure.
That took me to another challenging career path, being a professional freelancer who deals with clients daily and how to keep their satisfaction bar always up.
Being a freelancer was a side job to me, but this step played an essential role in starting my own software company. Especially since I had a great team working with me who supported this idea and backed me up.
More importantly, during that period, my team and I could establish a great client base who kept coming back to us asking for more software product features, support, and professional consultation.
I also started to realize that I gained enough experience, knowledge, and potential to accept bigger challenges, build products from scratch, and even provide support to existing products that we did not build and bring them back to life.
At that time, back in 2018, there was nothing left for us but to take a further step and kick off SiteReq officially for our growing client base and start working out building a good reputation for that name.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Well, SiteReq.com is not only a software development company’s website but also a digital marketing platform that allows everyone on the internet to share his knowledge and experience with the interested targeted readers and market his services/products at the same time.
The platform is still growing, but we managed to grow our monthly unique visitors from 6k to 14K in 4-6 months, which is around a 230% increase with an average time on site of 4+ minutes.
On the other hand, we managed to release 4 unique web products in the last 2 years, and we support and host them until today.
Our gross revenue since launch until today is around $170,000 which looks promising compared to what we invested.
Also, we are planning to acquire established businesses this year, and we will focus our investments to merge them under SiteReq’s umbrella.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Business
Starting my own business was a challenging step for me to take. The most prominent mistake that I learned was judging opportunities.
Some business opportunities seemed less appealing than others to me, but they ended up being the key to a bigger milestone and the other way around.
Other opportunities that I thought were promising ended up being nothing but a time waste. So I learned to weigh all opportunities the same until they are taken and never miss out on any of them.
Product Design
Moreover, we figured out that the best products that we built and survived were those that transcend what is already provided in the market today.
We realized that the first and most important step before the product design is to research the market competition and, more importantly, which features make each competitor unique.
Those unique features were always the fuel to not only designing a greater product than what’s already provided, but also they will make the product survive and stay ahead of the competition over time.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Ubersuggest
The most favorite platform that we use in search engine optimization and marketing is Ubersuggest.
We love this tool because it offers a lot of useful SEO features like:
- Accurate keyword research.
- Comprehensive competition analysis.
- Spotting content opportunities and much more.
Not to mention that it is offered at an affordable price compared to what it provides.
Zoho CRM
We also use Zoho CRM applications like Zoho invoices, emails, and projects. We found those applications extremely useful at the:
- Management and automation of our customer billing process.
- Communication with our customers professionally and efficiently.
- Reporting fully customized and branded reports to our customers.
And the good thing is, we did not put much effort to get those amazing features in return.
Azure Devops
Since we are much involved in continuous software delivery. Azure Devops came in handy with the CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery) part of the software delivery process.
We love Azure Devops because:
- We could easily automate the software testing and easily identify bugs.
- Our team leaders have been able to easily manage, assign and organize our tasks.
- Builds and deployments are easily automated, tracked, and rolled back if required.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
The Lean Startup
It’s the most useful book that I read in business.
I learned a lot of great tips and learned precious lessons in how to start a successful business and how to keep this business successful after expansion.
This book teaches how to write great content for any purpose. Blogs, websites, sales, anything.
The good thing about this book is that it’s not only focused on how to optimize your content for search engines but also how to write content that readers will enjoy and keep reading.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
- As previously mentioned, take advantage of any opportunity that appears in your way. Do not judge the potential of any opportunity before you take it.
- Never stop learning and reading. There’s always something new that your competitors know about, but you don’t.
- YouTube is a great resource in almost any field. Subscribe to those channels that are related to your business. You will always find new and useful tips out there.
Where can we go to learn more?
- Company’s website
- Company’s blog and marketing platform
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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