Monthly retainer fees

Hi Mark,

I've done several retainers over this last year - what I do is agree on a set number of elements for the client and charge a fee based over one-month's service.

So for one of my clients, she requires 8 blog posts a month, twitter management (3 tweets a day) and SEO for her site. We have a $900 retainer agreement for this.

SEO and twitter is outsourced, and the blog posts cost me 3 hours of my time maximum. I pocket the rest

I hope that helps!

best
Arfa

Hey Mark,

I'm on retainer for several big clickbank companies... basically they pay me $5,000 a month for a sales letter, 5 to 10 emails, and maybe one other small project. Total time invested, a few hours a month, if that.

I've had retainers for $10,000 a month where it was a sales letter and then 100 emails.

But just add up roughly what they need from you (sales copy, emails, etc..) and price it according to your fee structure... then maybe lower it a bit to give them a deal, since they are prob going to use you more often.

But there's no set method. Ray Edwards sent out an email last week mentioning some of his retainer fees. $2500 for a few emails a month, $5000 for some monthly consulting, etc..

My biggest takeaway? Price yourself accordingly to your worth and value, and don't let them give you more work than you'd normally get if you were doing these projects for separate clients.

I've had retainers where we agreed upon a set price of say $5,000 a month... then the client decided to throw all the work they could at me. That didn't last long.

So retainer pricing is alot like all other pricing, it's all perception and based on value... if you prove you can provide a lot more profit/value than the fee they pay you, they'll give you just about anything you ask (within reason)

haha, sorry Ray, you're right... I should have known better, after all, I've worked with both of you and have the highest, utmost respect for you both.

How's this... it will be easy for me to remember to add the L in for you... as in the Good "L"ooking Ray Edwards. i won't tell the other Ray I said that ;-)