Can you make good money giving SEM services?

Hi guys,

I was wondering how much do people on average earn giving SEM services? Ive checked online for companies that give Adwords-services and I don't understand how they earn enough to survive?

For example there was this company that was giving Adwords services ex." Spend 1000 dollars and we charge 150dollars a month." That was one of the highest charges as there was also 20 dollars charge. Also the work put into Adwords in a month just dosnt add up to the 150dollars/month charge in my opinion.

And what about SEO? How much people on average charge for doing a months work? Do you guys sell them as SEO Packages to clients or depending on the clients budget?

Thanks in advance.

Browse the marketplace and see what sorts of links are available at what prices.

When I was freelancing I charged the market rate, which was around 10% of monthly spend. If they have a higher budget (6 figures), you can probably go lower to 8%.

$150/mo isn't worth it imo, unless you're able to take on 50+ of those clients every month. It could work and be profitable if you upsell other services and outsource a team to take care of setting up those accounts and deal with reporting. Smaller accounts love to suck your time with a bunch of questions, ideas, and requests for reports, so I would keep that to a minimum or upsell more personalized support.

I'd imagine those smaller clients won't stay on for long, so you'll have to constantly find new prospects to onboard. Possible, but I personally wouldn't do it again.

Deleted member 15724, thank you for your reply. It helps a ton to understand more about the market. What would be a good asking price for doing SEM in your opinion?

It depends on how much time and effort an account would take, but my usual number is 10% of monthly spend. My old agency I worked at had a minimum of $1,500, so if the client's budget is $1,000 or $10,000, they'd be paying the full $1,500 either way.

Starting off, I wouldn't go any lower than $500. Once you have the campaign setup and running, management doesn't really take much time. Like I mentioned, smaller clients are needy and will email you endlessly with stupid questions, pointless reports, and ideas to implement, so once you start getting bigger clients, just up your price or kick them to the curb.

A friend of mine had good success getting work reaching out to small digital agencies to see if they needed to unload some SEM work, so that might be a good way to get a good start.

Marketing is literally one of the highest paid and most profitable professions in the history of the world.

It depends on the amount of effort you'll put into it and how invested you'll be in promoting what you do. I agree. How good you are at marketing your product can really be the determining factor in this.

Thank you for the answers guys! Thats true that clients can be sometimes demanding and 150 dollars every month might be a bit low. Would 500 dollars be better then? Would it be monthly?