How to charge for linkbuilding?

Let's say your doing link building for a client and they want you to create an appraisal or pricing structure for the links built. So like a chart that shows an appraisal value per link built, this way everyone is on the same page for how much will be paid out. My intention is the appraisal chart be simple and practical, not overcomplicated.

Here are the criteria that I have to work with (if you have any suggestions on additional criteria feel free to share).

Linking Criteria / Metrics

• Domain Authority
• Page Authority
• Trust Flow
• Citation Flow
• Page Rank
• (do-follow) Link (mandatory and expected)

Some important points is that the links I build must be from one of the sources below:

• Backlink can only come from an Article or Guest Blog Post
• Backlink can be from an EDU, GOV, ORG site but must also be in the form of an article or guest blog post.

If you're doing it on a per link basis, make sure you clearly calculate how long it will take to get those links. I'd much rather charge per hour basis otherwise I would make sure to have a decent buffer as stuff normally takes longer than expected.

Like ActionTaker said, you charge per man-hour worked (if your rates aren't an insult to the market), but also(!) charge on the usage of your servers.

If your resources are being tied up, your resources are putting in hours-worked.

You can use Fiverr as an example. A gig gets you $4 and a gig should absolutely take less than 30(really, 20) minutes to complete in order to be profitable, so from that calculate your labor composite-rate.

LakeForest said:

Like ActionTaker said, you charge per man-hour worked (if your rates aren't an insult to the market), but also(!) charge on the usage of your servers.

If your resources are being tied up, your resources are putting in hours-worked.

You can use Fiverr as an example. A gig gets you $4 and a gig should absolutely take less than 30(really, 20) minutes to complete in order to be profitable, so from that calculate your labor composite-rate.

Click to expand...

Even at time cost alone (i.e zero other costs, the electricity for your PC, any proxies, software..anything) that's $8 an hour. Unless you are a student just looking to turn some money anywhere this is a really CRAP wage. Once you add the costs of your own PC, power and sundries you're likely to be earning about 60% of minimum wage if you live in the West.

I set a time limit of 5 minutes on my gigs. 3 minutes up front (everything was automated, they give me the gig, I'd just enter the details, run one simple tool, transfer some info and press go) my overheads were a little more, VPS, software, proxies, captcha service. Then 2 minutes back end to send the reports and answer any queries. So I turned about $3 per gig in profit (or $36 an hour) which was just about worthwhile.

Automation was the key here, accepting some up front costs and set up to get a smooth flow going.
Ended up giving the gig to my Senior VA as a 13th month present last Saturday. She can now run it and make some extra cash as I'm not utilizing her 100% of the time

Scritty