Do you charge SEO service one time fee or monthly fee?

[joe0074]

Hi there,

I have a dentist who wants to rank on page 1 of Google for 5 keywords (medium competitive).

Can someone please advise me how much I should charge him ? one time fee or monthly fee ? any set up fee up front ?

If he wants to pay one time fee, how can I convince him to pay for a monthly fee ?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Sleinad]

Set up fee (the fee to get him ranked) then a monthly fee to 'maintain' his rankings. Convince him he will lose rankings if work isn't done continually, and that rankings will drop for good if you suddenly stop work or something. Think outside the box on ways in which you can charge more.

Inform him that he can get discounts, like 50% if he refers people to you or something. This will then get you more money!

Good luck!

 

[SEORasta]

monthly all the way..If you take a 1x fee he owns you as you will have to keep working to maintain it and never get money from it. if it is a big city 1000 + a month to rank it because it wont be overnight and you have to keep it going.

 

[aStroke]

Charge a set-up fee for initial costs and monthly for SEO/

 

[cash4u2]

Generally speaking if you are in the States the price point to stay around is what a full page ad in the yellow pages would cost.

In my area that is starts off at a min of $800. The price will change depending on
which category the business is in. Meaning a dentist would pay more then say a baker.

Just call your local yellow pages rep and ask him what they charge.

 

[44proseries]

Generally speaking if you are in the States the price point to stay around is what a full page ad in the yellow pages would cost.

In my area that is starts off at a min of $800. The price will change depending on
which category the business is in. Meaning a dentist would pay more then say a baker.

Just call your local yellow pages rep and ask him what they charge.

Say WHAT? A full page ad for only $800??? That is amazing. I have a client who pays just under $37K/year for a full page ad in the YP.

 

[SahL]

monthly always.

 

[kaif0346]

dont charge monthly you shod fix a fee as /hour and charge it weekly.
in my case I am charging min 5$/hour and work 14 hour /week..

 

[aStroke]

dont charge monthly you shod fix a fee as /hour and charge it weekly.
in my case I am charging min 5$/hour and work 14 hour /week..

That equates to a salary of $60 a week, or $240 a month...

People are throwing calculations on what to charge like the rate of a full page ad on YP and etc. There will always be a difference in what people charge.

Take myself for example. I wouldn't charge a dentist only $800 a month. If I get one client for their practice in a month, they would already make their money back (assuming that their average client's lifetime value is >1k). I honestly don't have a formula for figuring out a price to charge my clients. However, I can tell you that the competition in the SERPs, how much bank the business is pulling in, and their niche is what I base my price on (among other variables.

The trick is to find a formula that works for you. Find the variables that helps determine a price for you and use them.

 

[VaLeRyA]

monthly forever!

 

[b1step-ahead]

dont charge monthly you shod fix a fee as /hour and charge it weekly.
in my case I am charging min 5$/hour and work 14 hour /week..

$5 an hour? I think you bump up your prices a bit. I ran into a guy that does seo and sem and he charges $200, he's on top of the food chain.

 

[boydie]

Monthly on a fluid keyword list, ie start with 10 keywords and when a keyword gets in the first page stop working on it and add a new keyword, this keeps the client from getting bored hearing about the same keywords

 

[theMHR]

$150 - $250 monthly budget is good for these type sites, asked them 4 to 5 months for ranking procedure, you can easily do working in 3 months but for covering your money you have to extend working procedure.

 

[MakeLemonade]

Generally speaking if you are in the States the price point to stay around is what a full page ad in the yellow pages would cost.

In my area that is starts off at a min of $800. The price will change depending on
which category the business is in. Meaning a dentist would pay more then say a baker.

Just call your local yellow pages rep and ask him what they charge.

Never heard this but sounds like a good rule of thumb. GREAT, actually, since it gives a way to measure. Is this just for first page rankings or #1?

 

[goldstrike4u]

Go monthly and do your link building with redirects. If they decide to cancel pull the redirect and as soon as they start dropping in the rankings you can get them back.

 

[bluecoyote]

i saw your post about your advice with clients and creating backlinks and using redirects

thats sounds like a great idea as i have been burned by clients

can you explain alittle more specifically what you mean and what process entails

thanks

eddie

 

[jass11]

One time setup fee and Initial SEO Costs
and then small monthly fee.

 

[englandrm]

Don't go hourly, go monthly. It will be a recurring source of income.

For a client like that, I'll charge $400-1,000/m ; sometimes with a one month's setup fee to cover the keyword research, on page optimization, and development of the offsite campaign tailored to his sites needs (embellish a little).

Try and get a 6 months contract as well.

I would suggest outsourcing as well. Cover your costs by 2-10 times. If you can get him the results, he'll have no problem paying. As a dentist their average client is quite high $$$. Push Google Place Pages as well.

Hope that helps.

 

[englandrm]

Some people use the redirects for clients sites. How that works is you get a domain, and 301 redirect it to the clients site. You build links to that domain, which then passes on to the clients site. If the client stops paying or you want to remove the service for any reason, you can remove the 301.

I don't recommend using this though. They're paying for the SEO work, so they might as well get the long lasting results they've paid for. Taking it away after so many months, seems sketchy. And it turns the company into more of a scheme than a proper business. It's better to provide your clients with results, so they want to stick around for the long term.

I always accept payments upfront, so I never run into getting burned.

 

[Gammbyt]

I also use the yellow pages ad as a rough guide on how much I can expect to ask from a client. A full page ad here costs $600/month. There are a LOT of things that you can upsell on though. Google Places optimization, redesigning their site if it looks bad, hosting, etc are all additional services that you could add on to the agreement and give him a "bundled rate".

I usually waive the setup fee and charge them a monthly fee for standard SEO. If he only wants to pay the one time fee you can compare it to any other marketing or advertising offer that they might see. I don't know of any place that will offer you their advertisement services for a one time fee. They all charge a monthly fee and there is no reason why he should reasonably expect you to act differently in terms of payments as long as you are fair and competitive in your pricing.