Got my First Client, mortgage broker

No way in the world would I even entertain that for $500. Not even close. Even if it was just the website and he was gonna give me lots of referrals, I can't see myself going anywhere near that price.

Just because he will give you referrals, doesn't mean you have to all the sudden become a discount broker. If he was going to buy a Mercedes, do you think he would expect to get the Mercedes for half price or a third of the price just because he is referring somebody to the salesman?

If he is expecting $500 for all that or even for a website, he either 1) is completely clueless to what it costs (most likely the case), 2) He doesn't value your time and is a cheapo (in this case I would walk away).

If he is like this and tells all his buddies about the screaming deal he got from you, what do you think they are going to expect? Same thing.

It is most likely too late now, but he needs to understand you offer a premium service, and while he may pay a bit more, he will get a much higher quality product, and in the long run a better return on his investment.

Well done on getting a client. $500 is not enough to do what you have said you will do.

If you are just doing a site I don't think it'd take more than 5-10 hours to build. I'd do it for 500 but nothing more than the site.

My first client is a mortgage broker as well. My suggestion is not to offer everything at once. Stick to a website and then some SEO, get them some customers in the door and then you can set up a monthly residual for SEO and Social Media. Focus on increasing their business, not just offering every service you can imagine, then they will be your commercial.

nice to know that, I was clueless about the prices, can you guys give me and indication of the cost for this services.

You could use a wordpress theme for say $50 and customise it (or pay someone too) then upsell him. $500 for your first website only project isn't bad (as long as you let him know its an introductory price). What exactly did you promise him?

Hmm...I think more experienced website designers/internet marketers have heard that one before. It almost never pans out, in my experience. It's often just a way to get you to lower your price. But hey, not to be negative: congrats on your first client.

I dont see this clarified - did you really offer all of that for such a price? You would be lucky to break even unless you are using free templates and everything for the site.

Thanks for all the feed back,

I agree, $500 is really low for this project. It kinda sucks if the word will get out that you can have all this for $500 when others charge $1,500 or more for this.
Prices like might ruin the market and others will want cheaper prices.

$500 is wayyyy too low for this time of project, man. I know people that sell simple 5 page websites for about $800 and their clients don't even have an issue with that. Go 1500.

You said you landed a client. Although you haven't been paid yet, what service has he/she agreed to? I think the answer to that will help us help you as opposed to blindly throwing suggestions at you.

So, tell us, what have you agreed to provide for this new client so far?

This = $500/month would be okay. Depending on the city you're in. Since you haven't clarified yet... if you're doing all of what you just listed for a one time payment of $500, you're insane.

Pls let me explain.
This is my first project. I'm not even sure if I can deliver and this will be as a test for me, also will be a demo I can show future prospects.
This is one time fee.
1.website, 3 to 4 pages.
2.social media. Just create page, picture and info.
3.seo just until 1 page.
4. I will not do any seo after that, unless he pays a fee.
This is just for the creation. The client knows it is a cheap price and he is ok if I don't deliver. I'm still making 250 on this . Also the referal will not be charge this much.
And if he is happy with the project is 2 other business will not be the same price.
That is why I was asking here to get an idea

Ya know, that is crazy cheap, however it's a good way to start building your portfolio. You will be able to command much more as you progress and have a good portfolio.


Atlanta Internet Design

Jimbo13: Thanks, for the Idea. I will make it clear on the envoice.

Surely the SEO for a mortgage broker will be very competitive? This would take time to build towards. How will you be paid, in installments or a lump sum on completion? If on completion, how long before you can actually collect the cash with the SEO in the mix.

I would charge individually so the client knows the value of each service and then possibly negotiate on the final price overall.


I just finished off a client and the price for the website alone was $1000(after conversion from South African Rands). They paid for their own hosting, though I do offer permanent support in the usage of the website. How to edit a post and the like are typical requests.

I setup their list and integrated it into the website but quoted them separately for list management. I based the quote on a sliding scale based on the total amount of subscribers. The service used would be Aweber. SEO was quoted separately though I did all the basic on site SEO for them using All in SEO. Social media profiles was quoted seperately too.

I used to do website design a few years back and damaged my own business by not valuing my service. This forced me to under charge and even worst, work with people I didnt want to.

Surely the SEO for a mortgage broker will be very competitive? This would take time to build towards. How will you be paid, in installments or a lump sum on completion? If on completion, how long before you can actually collect the cash with the SEO in the mix.

I would charge individually so the client knows the value of each service and then possibly negotiate on the final price overall.


I just finished off a client and the price for the website alone was $1000(after conversion from South African Rands). They paid for their own hosting, though I do offer permanent support in the usage of the website. How to edit a post and the like are typical requests.

I setup their list and integrated it into the website but quoted them separately for list management. I based the quote on a sliding scale based on the total amount of subscribers. The service used would be Aweber. SEO was quoted separately though I did all the basic on site SEO for them using All in SEO. Social media profiles was quoted seperately too.

I used to do website design a few years back and damaged my own business by not valuing my service. This forced me to under charge and even worst, work with people I didnt want to.

Well done on your first client. Everything becomes much easier after that, you'll get more confidence and more referrals.

Seriously that's amazing, I think I read somewhere only about 10% of people succeed in Offline Marketing, well done on going in the right direction.

Thanks for the nice words

Your mortgage broker is making 1-3% of the loans he gets.
If what you give him gets him 1 lousy loan ever, he'll make a good chunk.

A few questions:
Why are you making him a website? If they don't already have one, you'll have a hard time selling them much of anything else unless you get their phones to ring. So, sell them on you creating them ads.

If they have a website but doesn't convert well, redo that and get them to hire you to do ads for them.

If they have a site that converts well but doesn't get traffic, get them to pay you to bring traffic.

Facebook, twitter, etc. are all nice if your mortgage broker uses such already. Otherwise, they'll let you do it, look at it, be impressed, forget about it. Then, a month later, maybe 2, he/she is going to start saying, twitter marketing doesn't work, facebook marketing doesn't work. And will tell people you're a nice person and make beautiful things that don't work.

I'd suggest you talk to him/her about what he's doing right now that he likes (or someone in his office likes), and help him/her with that.

For instance, I have a mortgage broker as a client. Made him a facebook page. Didn't do anything for him till he hired a new secretary that happens to think there's nothing better in the world than being on facebook. So she's on facebook a lot, on the owner's account, talking about the business. But she's doing it wrong.

So, if you're going to sell facebook, make sure they like using it and know how to use it well. If not, get them on facebook but you get a monthly fee for 'doing facebook' for them.

I've met several mortgage brokers who said that they did internet marketing and it doesn't work for mortgage brokers. Spoke at length with one a while back. He did internet marketing for 2 years and got not one lead. Internet marketing doesn't work.

All of them said, internet marketing doesn't work. None of them, internet marketing doesn't work the way I did/do it.

That's what they'll say about whatever you do, if you don't get them what they want. Usually, it's closing loans... If you get them leads but they fail to close them, they'll blame the leads you got them, not themselves.

If you can't get them the leads that convert sell your services based on other factors... like: "you don't want to be the only mortgage broker in X that doesn't have a website. So and so down the street has a great one. People assume he's better than other mortgage brokers because he has a site. People do check mortgage brokers online."

Getting them on page 1 is not going to be hard for some keywords but for the meaningful ones it's not a walk in the park either. Problem is, if you get them to be #9 for a bunch of keywords that few people use, they will not see results (as in, phone ringing).

Prepare them for that and make a contract/agreement whereby once they're on page 1 for x keywords, they will pay a certain additional amount so you could move them in the top 3 positions, an even larger amount if you create a 'powerful internet presence' for their business... Which means you take care of their google places, manta.com, yelp.com, etc...

You could get them 50 to 100 visits to their site from yelp.com and such sites each month.

If they're smart, they don't care much about ranking and how many visitors they have, they'll only care about how many people contact them off the internet and how many of those end up buying.

And they might blame you for processes they have that are broken.

And the odds are good that tracking is a process that's broken.

So, make sure you track for them.