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How to charge for your internet marketing expertise?

by BritishMike
22 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

I would really appreciate a bit of guidance here!

Here's my situation:

I make money using PPC (Adwords & Bing) to drive traffic to my own websites, where I collect information or 'leads' and sell them to a lead buyer. It's what I've done for nearly a decade and as a result I would class myself as an expert in PPC marketing.

Recently a few companies have made contact with me, wanting me to manage their PPC activity. They have fairly large budgets (six figures per year).

Here's the problem that I need help with - I have never managed campaigns on behalf of others before. I know Adwords inside out but I have no experience of being a consultant/PPC manager, so I don't know how to price my services, what to do in terms of having contracts, charging a setup fee etc, in order to make the most of this opportunity.

I can see this taking off and when I get a few clients I will have to start looking at office space and hiring people, but I just need to get off the ground first and I feel like I'm a little out of my depth with everything - this is a result of earning virtually passive income from home for the best part of 10 years. I'm a little out of touch!!!!!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,

Mike
#charge #expertise #internet #marketing
  • Profile picture of the author tamalanwar
    Hey Mike, good day to you.

    First of all it's great to meet an expert in the IM field.

    Now next up let me help you figure out how much you should charge since I too sell my time for clients (web design)

    You can try this:

    You want to earn X amount of money per month by sharing your expertise.

    e.g: £10,000

    And you are willing to spend Y amount of hours per month for doing it.

    e.g: 20 hours

    ^just some rough numbers.

    So if I do the math, your hourly charge should be:

    £500/hr

    As a beginner (in offering your services) you may want to lower that so you are getting clients, learning + gaining experience.

    Say £300/hr

    You can also take a % of your client's budget like your client is spending,

    £50,000

    So you take 5% = £2,500

    ...

    Mainly what you are offering is your time & 10 years worth of experience so you should go with an hourly fees. You can also offer a 10 hour pack and a setup fee.

    I hope this helps.

    Sincerely,
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    Tamal, I like the breakdown

    Mike, with your experience, and in-demand skills, I would say asking around for other vet's IMers rates, and never lowballing yourself is the way to go. Know your worth, and charge a bit extra

    All the best!
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    • Profile picture of the author tamalanwar
      Originally Posted by ryanbiddulph View Post

      Tamal, I like the breakdown

      Mike, with your experience, and in-demand skills, I would say asking around for other vet's IMers rates, and never lowballing yourself is the way to go. Know your worth, and charge a bit extra

      All the best!
      Thanks a lot Ryan!
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    • Profile picture of the author AnnaPaterson
      Or you can charge per campaign if you feel more comfortable like this.
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    The standard method would be to split the charges, depending on what the client actually wants.

    > If they just want you to set up the campaign so they can manage it themselves, it's typical to charge by the project or by the hour. Purchasing people tend to favor one or the other, so be prepared with both proposals.

    > If they want you to manage the campaign on an ongoing basis, it's typical to charge a percentage of the ad spend monthly. Rates seem to run between 10% and 15%. You might also be able to charge for setting up the campaign, but be ready to flex on that in return for a term contract. (i.e., waive the setup fee in return for a one year commitment).
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    Mike,

    Your time is precious so I would charge them by the hours you work on their ppc campaigns.

    You can charge anywhere between $30-$60 per hour worked.

    If you are just setting up their campaigns and that's it, charge them a fee of a few thousands of dollars.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lance K
    I say skip the hourly billing. You have been earning passive income from home for roughly 10 years, so would going back to trading your time for money really be appealing to you? Charge based on the value your experience & expertise will provide the client.

    These are potential clients with big budgets & they contacted you. They obviously see value in your skills. Now...I'm not saying to get greedy, but charge what your services are worth. I'd imagine that these are the type of companies that are willing to pay you $1 all day long if they make X dollars every time they do so.

    Your time and expertise are valuable resources. If you decide to pursue consulting, make sure you're making at least as much as you would by investing that time into furthering your existing efforts.
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    • Profile picture of the author RMTBladesouWert
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  • Profile picture of the author affilorama-portal
    I suggest you make different business packages to suit your client's needs and then of course, always prepare for customized package. You can take what others already suggested here.

    I would not go per hour too. Since if you will be considering your clients, you also need to think like a customer- one who is looking for a good deal from their investment. So i think you can charge them by campaign or something that can really be a win situation for them.
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  • Profile picture of the author webrankingseoservices
    Hi Mike,
    Selling Big Tickets is an Art and you need to be very good in your verbal communications. I can tell you this since i know about one of my friend
    who is very good at it and i took his help for one of my project in SEO.

    He helped me acquire a client initially for $400 pm, which eventually in just
    a month turned out to become $6000 per month. He was so good in managing
    them and retaining inspite of rank drops due to latest penguin updation.

    This contract lasted for 6 months and i made more than $26000 from the
    deal. If i had personally done, i do not think i would have managed to even
    quote $400 in the first place. This was my first big deal. Before this, i was
    hardly charging $250 per month.

    If you are interested, i can ask him to help you with cracking the deal.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    I have no experience of being a consultant/PPC manager, so I don't know how to price my services, what to do in terms of having contracts, charging a setup fee etc, in order to make the most of this opportunity.
    The simple answer is to research existing PPC management companies.

    Being as they came to you, I would let them make me an offer.
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  • Profile picture of the author tonyfburke
    Hi All,
    In my experience, companies like a fixed price contract, but they also like to know what time is involved. What ever price you think it will be, add 30% to it to cover yourself, as you will find when working for someone else, you will loose time providing reports, invoices, time on the phone etc. etc. Work on a high priced set up fee, and a keen monthly rate for management (hours x hourly rate$). I would be of the opinion that the set up is more valuable to them than management. Other wise they would do it themselves. Because of that, you would be more likely to get the price you want, and get a feel for how it feels to be working for someone else again.
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  • Profile picture of the author thisisraz65
    Charge based on your hour.
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  • Profile picture of the author BritishMike
    Thanks for the replies so far! I'm still a little confused about the best approach, as some are suggesting an hourly rate whereas others say don't go down that route. Lance K - you're right that it's difficult for me to go from virtually passive income to effectively being held accountable again, but I see this as what I must do to build up a business that I can eventually sell. The passive income has lasted a long time and still persists despite Google's constant changing of the goalposts, but for how long? And I have another baby on the way!

    I love the idea from affilorama-portal too, of creating different packages, but my question would be this: what is each package made up of? I'm not sure how I would package up my expertise like this, and if anyone has some examples that relate to PPC (Adwords, BingAds) then it would be much appreciated!!!!!!

    Thanks again,

    Mike
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  • Profile picture of the author BritishMike
    Thanks for the replies so far! I'm still a little confused about the best approach, as some are suggesting an hourly rate whereas others say don't go down that route. Lance K - you're right that it's difficult for me to go from virtually passive income to effectively being held accountable again, but I see this as what I must do to build up a business that I can eventually sell. The passive income has lasted a long time and still persists despite Google's constant changing of the goalposts, but for how long? And I have another baby on the way!

    I love the idea from affilorama-portal too, of creating different packages, but my question would be this: what is each package made up of? I'm not sure how I would package up my expertise like this, and if anyone has some examples that relate to PPC (Adwords, BingAds) then it would be much appreciated!!!!!!

    Thanks again,

    Mike
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  • Profile picture of the author CoMpUtErGoD20XX
    I definitely prefer not going the hourly rate approach and charging based on some % over campaign spend. Also, if they are paying by credit card make sure to add a fee for that into your price.

    I have managed PPC campaigns for companies in the past and charged a setup fee and then a fee of 10-20% on top of whatever their monthly spend was. That's in addition cc fee. My clients were no where near as big as yours though but feasibly a bigger campaign is more work and hence would even out making it the same as a little campaign. The additional charge was for maintenance of the campaign so I would check in on it and make adjustments as necessary but if no adjustments are need you still get paid!

    I had all of this setup for auto-bill every month through my Authorize.net account. They can even direct bill a checking account which is cheaper than a CC if that helps keep your costs down.
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  • Profile picture of the author karlmay1980
    Mike the simple way is charge for results, the company want to make $10k profit from a campaign, then charge them a % of that, so ad spend and your costs are irrelevant as long as you can hit their targets.

    If someone said to you they will make you $10k per month profit you would be happy to pay them 10% right?

    You work out what sort of ad spend they need with some information about their conversion rates, add on the 10% of their target you want paying and then put it to action, they pay you, they see results, they come back for more asking for higher no doubt and you make even more, just stepping up their best campaigns and moving their budget up accordingly.

    Hope that helps, its always easier to convince people to pay for results than it is services.
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  • Profile picture of the author gcbmark20
    Hi,

    WHAT IS YOUR TIME WORTH TO YOU?

    Work this out and then make sure you are not under selling yourself.

    The last thing you want to do is GIVE up most of your living life for
    less than half of what your knowledge is worth.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chrislink Ads
    Banned
    Hi Mike, here's my brief suggestion which I believe will help. Simple contact one of the Adwords guru like Perry Marshall and ask them how much they charge for their service and then, now, it's up to you to charge an equivalent amount depending on how experienced and the results your experience is likely going to yield for them.

    I hope this helps

    P.S visi perrymarshall.com to get inquire fom this adwords guru.
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    • Profile picture of the author colorado1850
      First, I don't have experience negotiating big ticket deals like what you are talking about. I used to manage PPC for others but their budgets were much lower than what it seems like you're being presented with.

      Anyway, with all of that said, I did pick up something from a recent Frank Kern webinar I watched where he talks about bringing on big ticket clients. I hope it helps you.

      I'm very much paraphrasing here / hopefully doing a decent job of conveying some core pieces of what Frank communicated:

      1. Get them to come to you (this is arguably the hardest part - getting people to believe that you can deliver results - and you've already accomplished this )

      2. Go back to them and let them know that you "...can only help businesses with x y z under these conditions". I hope that makes some sense. It is hard for me to translate what I remember Frank saying into your situation. But the basic premise is that you want to a) give yourself an opportunity to learn a lot more about them and the deal and what they want and the people involved and b) this adds to the intrigue they have about you - you are hard to get - they have to interview with you to be your client!

      3. Do some research on what they do now with PPC, the product line, the site, landing pages, etc. You are probably already experienced enough to know a lot of what works and what doesn't without doing a bunch of research. But this is where you can make the call as to whether you can help get them where they want to be or not. You obviously want to take on those situations where you pretty clearly see that you'll come out looking like a hero.

      4. Set up the call/interview. Spend 20 or 30 minutes on the phone with them. Interview them. Ask them what they are trying to accomplish. What's the result they want? State back to them what you hear them saying and make sure they agree that you get it. Is a 30% increase in sales what they want?
      And get into where they see the opportunities for improvement too.
      Frank gets into some NLP stuff which I'm not going to do a good job of translating here . But the bottom line is that you want to get clear on exactly what result they want, the keywords etc, and what they have to get there (in terms of products / services etc).

      Then go back through what you heard - "...it sounds like getting 30% more revenue out of your PPC campaigns is what you want to accomplish. And it sounds like you see opportunity to improve xyz campaign, is that right?" And then lay out an overview of your plan and ask them if those ideas sound like an effective plan for acheiving the 30% goal. Etc.

      At this point you have a good idea of the numbers. If you are thinking of charging them 6k / month and the plan you've worked out is going to make them an extra 100k they aren't going to blink about paying you. Well, at least that's the theory anyway.

      Hopefully that gives you some workable ideas at least from someone (Frank Kern) who does a lot of high end consulting.
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  • Profile picture of the author lotsofsnow
    The usual way to handle this is to charge a percentage of the advertising spend. The general rate is 15%.

    You can work out different deal with some fixed portion and a lower percentage or you can work out a deal where you get paid a percentage of the profit in addition.


    Basically handling a PPC campaign is what an advertising agengy does and those rules apply.

    With all online things you will run not all kind if strange deals made by people from very low income countries. This should not disturb you.

    Make sure you get paid for your knowledge and experience.
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  • Profile picture of the author humbledmarket
    Banned
    I think you got some great responses here already. I especially like the comment by Lance.

    Rather than being another chatterbox to repeat what others are saying I'd suggest you check out an article by searchengineland.com about this EXACT topic by Brad Geddes, I think it would help a lot...a more detailed and concise response (problem with certain forum discussions is you have a whole not of varying opinion from a whole lot of different expertise level - this is great to get some ideas though eventually you need to tune out what you think you should)

    Another link you may want to check out is:
    PPC Management Fees & Rates | Pay Per Click Pricing for Management Services | Terrakon Marketing | Terrakon Marketing

    - Do note I am not affiliated to any of these linked pages either; they came from a simple Google Search <- lmgtfy.com
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  • Profile picture of the author vishwa
    The charge will be based on your expertise and its hourly basis.
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