23 replies to this topic

[Jill]

Good job redhead, let us know how it all turns out!

[redhead]

Thanks Jill, I sure will!

[Leann_Pass]

and lo and behold, today I got someone else who approached me and wants me to do an entire seo campaign from the ground up; new site, everything. I'm a bit overwhelmed and a lot giddy.

Cool!! Looks like you're on a roll =)

[phenixmarketing]

Hi Redhead,
It sounds like you're off to a good start. My best advice to determine a reasonable contract rate is to start by finding out what the client's ROI goal is and then work back into a reasonable price that fits. When you start asking questions about a client's business and financial goals, you may run into businesses who know exactly what they need and will appreciate the fact that their goals are important to you. ...Or more often than not, you'll run into clients who don't have a clue and you then put yourself in a position to be an invaluable resource to help guide their business. If you fully understand a client's ROI goals and needs, then you can easily set a price that will not only make the client happy but almost guarantee that you will never lose the long term business. A discount retailer may only be able to afford a budget of a few percent of revenue whereas a company dealing in subscriptions or software downloads could afford 50-70% or even more. In any contract that I make, I always set the stage to transition into a scalable performance based contract. With SEO, there is almost unlimited potential to grow but it is also difficult to go back to a client and ask for more money to add onto a project so always set the expectation that your services can scale with your client's business volume. It's also a good idea to understand the client's alternatives to what you are proposing. For instance, if you have a retailer who wants to meet a budget of 5% of revenue but all other advertising that they run costs them 25-100% or more, then you have a lot more leverage to push your price up to the maximum limit that they can bear. Just keep in mind that clients who spend foolishly on advertising don't usually stick around long.

Good luck!

Pete

[donp]

Have a problem with how much to charge? Charge them for a 4 to 6 week study on an optimzation program ( I charge around 2,500-3,000). I look at their keywords, adword campaigns, current and past stats, competing sites, links, and eveything else I can think of to figure out what I have to do to get them to the goal they want.
By that time I know what it will take me timewise to get them there and what it is worth to them and can come up with a realistic fee.

[randfish]

The very best amount to charge for SEO is $19.
(But most of you already knew that)

[redhead]

Well, hey now, I thought the answer to life was 42?

Seriously, yall have helped so much. I am feeling more and more confident about how much to charge because of your input.

[BryanP]

Redhead,

Curious to know how you're going with your plans and SEO work and whether you've hammered out a firm contract. Fill us in!

To everyone, I have a question of my own.

I am working as a freelancer at a new financial services company in the Boston area as an "HTML productionist." The thrust of my job is updating portions of the company's web portal, which provides retirement plan information for various clients. I update .pdf files, change links, make basic HTML pages, etc.

Our web team is also undertaking a project to build out a public web site for the company (The portal above is a separately-branded portal, and does not show our company's name). Part of this project should include SEO/SEM.

I have been asked/volunteered to handle the bulk of the SEO duties (and probably, SEM as well). I have never done explicit SEO work for pay, though I have a pretty good understanding of the process (thanks to resources such as Jill's site and newsletter, and this forum) and have had some success in SEO in my own sites that I've worked on and a larger site I updated for my previous employer.

I want to know if I should ask to compensated additionally for these SEO duties -- as they clearly were not part of my original job description. This is knowledge that I have and the others don't -- or at least not to my level -- and could help bring the company a pretty penny if my plan-to-be has a modicum of success.

Any suggestions on how I might approach the company (or the creative agency that officially employs me) for additional compensation?

[torka]

If I'm understanding your situation correctly, you were contracted by a creative agency to provide the HTML production services to one of their clients, the financial services firm, right?

In that case, this new work represents a change in the scope of your contract. The thing is, in order to reflect the new contract scope and (possibly) raise the amount of money they're paying you, the creative agency will want to raise the amount of money they're charging the client.

Agencies usually don't like it when their contractors go ahead and accept extra work without allowing them to renegotiate the contract. Once you've agreed, it's very hard for them to go back to the client and say they're not going to let you do the work if the client refuses to pay for it. And, really, your contract is with the agency. The agency is the one with the contractual relationship with the client.

So, I'd go first to the client and let them know that you have to go through the agency before you can take on any extra duties outside the scope of your original contract. Then go to the agency and tell them that the client has approached you with this opportunity to expand the scope of your assignment. Let them know you're qualified and willing, and that the client wants you to take this on. Then let them handle it from there.

My as a former freelancer...

--Torka