Thirteen months ago an insurance guy hired me for some SEO.  Got him to have several keywords on page 1 (1,1,3,3,4,9,9,10).  That increased his client acquisition 10%.  He gets $200 to $500 per new client upfront and, then, if they stay, he gets residual income.  Most stay a few years. 

But he was sure that once I got him the positions, he'll have them forever.  On April 7th, I met with him again (he hired me to do SEO for 2 new keywords, bought a mobile site and an additional page for his site... for which he did not want any SEO).  But he wouldn't pay for maintenance.

I got him ranking months ago, stopped doing SEO for him months ago too.  He's floated at the top for 9 months with me doing no SEO.  I think that's why he was sure he was going to keep being at the top.

Well, I met with him yesterday (about the mobile site).  He mentioned he stopped getting calls off the internet.  So, today, I checked his rankings: He's on page 8 or farther down.  The last time I checked was on the 14th of this month: he was in the usual positions except for a related keyword (not being SEO'd for it but it's the root of several of the other keywords I did SEO for.  Usually, he was 15-21 for this keyword, on the 14th he was 36).

Anyway, I wonder if, now, he'll be willing to pay for maintenance.  What do you think?

I was willing to do the maintenance at $60/per month/per keyword.  Now, I'll have to charge him 3 or 4 times that for 3 or 4 months.

I got into this because I have a site I did not do any SEO to for months.  For the same reason as my insurance guy client.  I built it in April 2010.  Got it to be #2 for the main keyword, #1 for the 2nd (by traffic) keyword in September 2010.  And, till 1 month ago, it stayed there (actually, it was 2, 3 or 4 for the main keyword, 1 or 2 for the 2nd one... The same with the other 8 keywords on page 1 (though most were 4-6).

The interesting thing, I saw the mistake so clearly in the case of my client.  Did not see it coming in my case.  Accurate thinking missing in action caused havoc.

In my case, traffic's dropped 90%, so income's down 95% for the site.  It was never great, but, still, converted into an hourly rate, it was awesome.