Advise.so Review 2026: Jacky Chou and Sean Markey's SEO Community + An Alternative

In this Advise.so review:

I show you whether Advise.so's private SEO community is helpful for beginners.
You see what's inside Advise.so's membership, including advanced SEO discussions and a weekly #Goals Slack channel.
I include the Advise.so reviews on Reddit and YouTube, so you don't have to dig around.
I show you the best way to earn recurring revenue through SEO. Hint: It's local SEO lead generation.

In my experience of making money online with SEO for over a decade already, the black hat SEO tactics that the Advise.so community encourages are like drawing a card from the Chance or Community Chest deck in Monopoly. There’s a chance you’ll make some money, but eventually you’re likely to pull the “Go to Jail” card. Google actively looks for websites using black hat SEO tactics to punish them by diminishing their visibility in organic search. Using these tactics is similar to bodybuilders like Rich Piana, who have taken the steroid Trenbolone. You can experience some incredible results early on, but you damage your web property long-term. Google is like the US police hunting down homicide suspects. Although some people get away with it, most get caught and brought to justice eventually.

Public Review Sentiment

Sentiment is based on public reviews, discussions, and independent analysis available at the time of publication. Percentages reflect identified positive, negative, and neutral sentiment by platform.

Reddit (1 reviews)

Positive but limited

Positive: “Check out Jacky Chou's advise community. It's a paid community but worth every penny imo.”

100%

YouTube (4 reviews)

Mixed testimonial evidence

Positive: “My timeline from being broke AF to my first 20k month made off affiliate marketing - Thanks to @jackyychou.”

Negative: “Only four public reviews exist, and three of which appear on the Advise.so homepage itself.”

Independent Review Sites (3 reviews)

Limited verification

Positive: “Overall Rating 5.0”

Negative: “This seems inconsistent with their claim of being the most active SEO community.”

Advise.so Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
✔️ Advise.so provides access to advanced SEO tactics not discussed publicly.	❌ Monthly subscription format can lead to significant costs for long-term Advise.so membership.
✔️ Advise.so is filled with successful agency owners and established SEO professionals.	❌ Limited third-party Advise.so reviews raise questions about actual member satisfaction.
✔️ Members receive two complete SEO courses from Jacky Chou and Sean Markey.	❌ Claims of "only 3 spots left" suggest Advise.so uses artificial scarcity marketing tactics.
✔️ Adivse.so offers valuable networking opportunities through twice-monthly video hangouts.	❌ Adviso.so community size of 400-500 members may limit networking diversity compared to larger platforms.
✔️ Negotiated deals on SEO tools can offset Advise.so membership costs for active users.

Price: Advise.so costs $169 per month currently, with a tendency to increase pricing as more members join.

Refund policy: Advise.so does not publicly display any refund policy on their website.

Origin: Advise.so was founded in 2024 by Jacky Chou and Sean Markey

Is Advise.so a Good SEO Community for Online Business Beginners?

Advise.so is not a good SEO community for online business beginners. It explicitly states that “You are not a complete beginner” as one of the membership requirements. The community only accepts people with active online businesses who can bolster group discussion by sharing tactics.

Advise.so is also not good for beginners because it covers more gray hat and black hat SEO strategies. These types of strategies can work, but they can also completely destroy a business overnight if not executed with caution. For example, one of the tactics that Jacky promotes is tiered backlinking. He points a large quantity of cheap, spammy backlinks to his higher quality backlinks to boost his website rankings. An SEO beginner might struggle to set this up correctly and accidentally wipe out their progress on a website project.

It’s better for a beginner to stick with mostly white hat SEO tactics that have been proven successful over years of data before exploring riskier strategies with temporary outcomes.

What Does Advise.so Membership Include?

Advise.so membership includes:

Private community access: Members gain entry to what the platform describes as a vetted and active community of SEO professionals, agency owners, site creators, affiliate marketers, and link builders. The community operates on a Circle Group platform with both forum-style discussions and live chat functionality.
Advanced SEO discussions: The platform facilitates conversations about advanced topics including partnerships, rank and rent strategies, parasite SEO, and other tactics typically not discussed in public forums. Members are expected to openly share their growth tactics and business URLs. This creates a transparent environment for learning from real case studies and implementations.
Twice-monthly video hangouts: Jacky and Sean host regular AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions where members can ask questions directly to the founders and other community experts. These hangouts also feature "site roast" sessions where the community provides feedback on member websites.
Educational courses: Membership includes access to two complete courses: Jacky's Local SEO Course and Sean's Domains + SEO Course. These courses represent additional value beyond the community discussions.
Advise Marketplace access: Members can post and browse opportunities on the exclusive Advise Marketplace, potentially facilitating business partnerships, service exchanges, and collaboration opportunities within the community.
Tool discounts and deals: The platform claims to have negotiated special deals on various SEO tools and products, which could help offset the membership cost for active tool users. However, these specific tools and discount amounts are not publicly listed.
Accountability features: The community includes a weekly #Goals Slack channel where members can share objectives and be held accountable by their peers. This adds a motivational component to the networking and learning experience.
Physical merchandise: Annual subscribers receive an Advise t-shirt and Jacky's partnership contract template, adding additional value for longer-term commitments.

Is It Still Worth Pursuing a Career in the SEO Industry?

Yes, it is still worth pursuing a career in the SEO industry, but only if you choose a suitable business model. AI has changed the landscape of SEO substantially over the last few years, causing many SEO business models to go obsolete. For example, niche sites and authority sites were popular and lucrative in the past, but those models don’t work anymore. Google AI overviews are taking clicks from informational, national and global keywords that those sites once targeted to bring traffic to their offer. That’s also one of the reasons that the partnership SEO model Jacky Chou promotes doesn’t work well anymore either. Even if you can do parasite SEO with a legacy media brand, fewer and fewer people are clicking through to these websites where you embed your affiliate link.

Fortunately, Google AI overviews are not taking clicks from local keywords. Business websites and Google Map Packs still appear at the top of the SERPs. Even if AI overviews do start appearing, people will still click through to business websites to see reviews and service offerings before making a buying decision. That’s why SEO business models like rank and rent and local SEO service agencies are still viable and lucrative.

Who Are Jacky Chou and Sean Markey?

jacky chou

Jacky Chou and Sean Markey are the co-founders of Advise.so. Chou brings business-building expertise as the founder of Indexsy, a holding company that has acquired over 50 online businesses, and Marketing Letter, a newsletter with over 25,000 subscribers. He has over 48K followers on X and over 20K subscribers on YouTube, where he actively posts building in public videos daily. He promotes his various SEO-related officers to his audience, including his SaaS products BrowserBlast, LocalRank.so, and Revive.so.

sean markey

Sean Markey contributes acquisition SEO and domain expertise as the founder of Ranks.com and author of Rank Theory, an SEO newsletter focused on emerging theories and strategies. His specialization in acquisition SEO, buying existing ranked websites rather than building from scratch, and expertise in aged domains provides a unique value for advanced SEO practitioners. Together, they offer complementary skills, combining business scaling knowledge with acquisition-focused SEO strategies that emphasize buying rather than building web properties.

Why Is Ippei’s SEO Community Better Than Advise.so for Most People?

Ippei's SEO community is better than Advise.so for most people because it:

Is beginner friendly but filled with high level experts to learn from
Includes two live coaching sessions per week compared to just two per month
Requires one set payment for lifetime access rather than monthly payments that add up
Is the largest SEO community on the internet with 7,500+ students
Has longevity, having been active and growing for over a decade
Focuses on one high-leverage, low-risk business model (rank and rent) instead of chasing temporary gains with gray hat and black hat tactics like parasite SEO

One of my local SEO lead generation websites is Santa Clarita Prime Windows, Seco Canyon Rd, Santa Clarita, California 91350, 661-453-8100, https://www.santaclaritaprimewindows.com/. Last month, this website generated 31 leads and my client closed $13,450 in new business. We have a 10% commission deal, so they paid me $1,345 for the leads.

In my opinion, it’s much better to build an SEO business around white hat SEO tactics than black hat SEO tactics because you can enjoy the benefit of ranking website properties on Google long-term. White hat SEO tactics are like buying an iPhone while black hat SEO tactics are like getting a low-cost Nokia. One lasts for years without issue while the other is likely to develop faults quickly. I’d rather bet my money on Blackjack where I know my chance of success is relatively high if I use a proven card counting strategy than try to get lucky with Keno where I know the house has the advantage. That’s why I build my websites using proven white hat SEO tactics instead of trying to get lucky with big wins like black hat SEO sometimes allows.

I’ve been a rank and rent coach for around 7 years now. Rank and rent remains the best online business model for beginners because it offers high profit margins reaching upwards of 90% and requires low startup costs, with each digital asset costing as little as a few hundred dollars in yearly expenses. Compared to pitching SEO services, rank and rent is much easier to sell because you generate results in advance. You can allow your prospect to trial your leads instead of promising results in the future, so it’s easier to convert clients. However, students in my rank and rent program don’t even need to do sales. You can generate leads for my high-ticket roofing client, a unique opportunity no other SEO community is offering.