Client wants to pay me $7000 - need advice.

[leonardodv]

Does "life-time" mean: (his retire age - his current age) = 30 - 50 years.(lets round it up to 40)

here's my calculation:

$300(per month) x 12(months) x 40(years) x 20%(discount) = $115,200

you should charge him at least 100k! for this term... 7k is a Joke!

 

[HostStage]

You could set a yearly fee with more or less that amount.

 

[brainstorm1]

You guys need to stop suggesting he take the money then stop doing the work later on or start slacking off. First of all, seeing as the client gave a deadline, they probably do things very formally and will require a contract. Your suggestions will cause a breach of contract, regardless of whether or not the $7k was the right choice.

Secondly, promising work and then tapering it off later on is just a horrible business practice and could hurt him down the road. I have no idea why such a thing would be suggested. I would never do business with someone performing or suggesting poor practices.

Okay let us assume that the guy is 25 years old. If we assume he is American and a male then his life expectancy is about 75. That means that over a lifetime he will be expected to perform $7000 worth of services.

50 years x 12 months = 600 months of total work.

Therefore, for each month of work he will be obligated to perform around $11 worth of services per month.

So there is nothing contractually WRONG with 1-2 Fiverr gigs per month and that's it.

 

[marrrko]

I wouldn't go for it definitely

 

[hpv222]

ask them if you could pay them $7000 for a lifetime of dental services for you, your family, your friends, your schoolmates, and half the hood and see what they have to say

 

[LordCameltoe]

Have him sign a contract with your company name (if he absolutely wants to sign a contract). Whenever you're tired of updating, close up shop and re-open under a different name.

Unless you live in a highly competitive area like L.A, I doubt keeping your client on page 1 for a local dentist term is much work.

 

[Wings[SENSE]]

Have him sign a contract with your company name (if he absolutely wants to sign a contract). Whenever you're tired of updating, close up shop and re-open under a different name.

Unless you live in a highly competitive area like L.A, I doubt keeping your client on page 1 for a local dentist term is much work.

Wtf? You can't be serious!?

@ OP: Don't accept it for all the reasons already stated in this thread.

 

[Hostwinds]

Setup a new LLC, accept the payment under the LLC name and then declare bankruptcy

Take the money and declare bankruptcy it will void the contract

 

[Scripteen]

Whose life? You, Him or the clinic?

Seriously, Tell him to trade it for free lifetime dental care for you and then visit him weekly for teeth cleaning/whitening and see how long can he stand by this.

 

[meathead1234]

Setup a new LLC, accept the payment under the LLC name and then declare bankruptcy

Take the money and declare bankruptcy it will void the contract

Wow, did you really just suggest that?

Remind me not to host any sites with you!

 

[brainstorm1]

Setup a new LLC, accept the payment under the LLC name and then declare bankruptcy

Take the money and declare bankruptcy it will void the contract

It will void the contract, but you don't keep the money anyway due to bankruptcy laws.

Poor choice... not even minding the moral issues.

 

[redrubies]

redrubies: Yes they did and I have ranked their requested keywords, not names, but general exact match keywords, yes, examples: Oregon dentist, Oregon downtown dentist, Oregon cosmetic dentist, etc which actually get traffic.

Interesting, nice share, good for her.

Hmmmm I would have to say no then. Google changes too much.

 

[elviswong]

I probably would not take it. Yeah sure it's 7k right away but...
Man that's a lot of hard work ya know !
Try to calculate the number of hours you will need to spend.
Then you'll know.
Are you worth 5$/hour ? That's the question.

I just edited:
Why not offer her a one year deal instead ?

 

[DrJekyll]

The key point is he dont care about if he would offer free dental for life, he is saying he is going to get it for life either from you or someone else.

You have 2 choices, Take the money. and hope maintenance is minimal.

or Explain that after the competitor burns through the $7k worth of service they are either going to disappear, or just drop him like a hot potato.

Now more than likely the other company has staff to do their own seo, and have spare time they are already paying staff for, so they are willing to take the cash.

You are a small entity and will be able to better service them monthly.

 

[Maja92]

brainstorm1: lol, very good assumption, I am 24 years old, and a Canadian male.

Hostwinds: Hahaha, filing for bankruptcy is nothing to play with in business... so definitely not worth it for 7K, lol, but thank you for the suggestion.

Scripteen: all the above

elviswong: yes, i may consider something along those lines and the similar long term deals already suggested.

DrJekyll: yeah, that's the ultimatum. To everyone: yes, I can negotiate, but this is definitely an ultimatum since they told me they are willing to find someone else.

This has certainly been interesting, so out of all the replies so far, only 2 people have had a similar situation? lol.

 

[meathead1234]

Slightly different suggestion, but if you're looking to build a local SEO business this might be a good idea.

Accept their offer and take the $7k.

Invest that into building your own private blog network. $7k should get you a nice little network which would be more than enough to rank a local site like that.

As long as you own and maintain the network properly, the site should continue to rank. You're not guaranteeing them a lifetime #1 ranking, so as long as you stay on page one you should be good. The only situation where it wouldn't is if you went out of business, where the whole lifetime contract would be irrelevant anyway. Don't go whore the network out or anything - purely use it for your own sites.

That's what I would do anyway. Take advantage of the upfront cash to build yourself some infrastructure. Once you have a nice little network you'll be able to rank local sites in no time at all and clean up

 

[Amsterdammer]

I don't want to intrude but this guy seems to be on ripoffreport. Ali says it isn't so, but still.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/internet-marketing-companies/sinai-marketing-inc/sinai-marketing-inc-dba-maste-35636.htm

He is also mentioned on another site where people question that he needs Admin rights to your site. I am too much of a n00bie to know if he needs such a thing to provide free SEO.

http://allmytricks.hubpages.com/hub/Can-they-optimize-your-blog-mastergoogle-review

What I find questionable, as a n00bie, is that it is hard to find anything where he has no influence upon. It almost seems like he is working hard on damage control.
Also, he founded another company Sinai Marketing Inc. and 4 years later he starts another one? I read on one website he was an employer and he is mentioned as the founder on another for Sinai Marketing.

I wish I wasn't such a n00bie, then I would just take Meathead's idea and create my own reviews, just like Ali seems to have done here by providing free SEO to people...

Anyways, I didn't want to intrude, please ignore as you see fit.

Edit: What I also don't understand is how Ali can say on his own Blog that SEO takes a lot of time and is constantly changing. How can he provide lifetime SEO? Did he mean for the lifetime of his company?

 

[trapmarketing]

This all depends on your ethics I really believe, you can either explain the situation to them and try to get them to understand( don't forget to pitch them the fact that, if the other SEO company that did it for life time has their competitor as a client too, so they wouldn't be able to really be true to their client, since they're ranking both of them for the same keywords and sooner or later one will be doing better than the other). Or you can simply write up the contract in a way where you would be able to terminate it, work for them for the time period, that you think is fair and terminate off the exploit in your contract!

 

[poweronics]

Ok, so I got a client, still new who is a dentist about 3 months ago, paying me about $300 a month to do their SEO. However, they recently proposed that they would rather do what one of their competitors did, which was; payed an SEO company a one time LIFE time fee of $7000 CASH. Of course their competitor is on the first page as well. They told me to get back to them with my answer on March 27th or they may consider finding someone else who will take them up on their offer.

Question for you is: what do you guys think? What should I do, take the 7K CASH and work on their SEO for a life time? lol. Is that too much risk and responsibility?

First time being in this position, has anyone been in this position? I didn't know some companies would charge this way.

Advice, suggestions, any words of wisdom will be helpful.

It is not a feasible deal buddy. Have you asked him what company on the earth is working for that "life time" condition?

 

[Beats]

If paying monthly is too much of a hassle for them, just tell them you can give them a discounted rate for a year long contract. If they insist on paying $7k up front then say the best you can offer is a 3 year term for that price with no guarantees that their rankings will stay the same because of the constantly changing nature of SEO.

Otherwise if they still don't want to take your offer, then just drop the client because not every client is worth keeping.