Structuring consulting fees & services for website tools

Charging for a customer email marketing tool and SEO services

[aschrage]

Has anyone ever worked as a consultant and charged for the following services? I'm looking for hints on what type of arrangements work best.
1) email marketing tool: I have created a couple of simple pages that will send out emails and automatically add and delete people from the list (subscribe/unsubscribe). (This customer actually has people who WANT email from him!) I want to retain ownership of the code, even though it will reside on his ISP. I guess I should draw up a short legal agreement. Has anyone out there done this before? Any idea what I should charge?
2) SEO work: I am not really an SEO expert, but I feel my client has a much better chance of success with me doing the work rather than him. I want to make him an offer either by click or by percentage of sales. Does anyone know where I can find comparables for what to charge him? I was thinking 10-15% of sales or 5-10 cents per click.
Thanks.

[Travoli]

2) If you are going to go on a commission basis, sounds like an affiliate arrangement. Have you checked to see how affiliate programs in your industry work, and how affiliates are compensated?
I would start there.

[webdiversity]

If your not an SEO expert would it not make sense to hire an expert and build in a margin for yourself that way ?

Personally I'd steer clear of the 10-15% of sales. It's too fraught with danger and if you are going to do the SEO properly it's going to cost some money (or you haven't done it right). The onus is also on the skill of the clients sales team, and that is something you have little control over.

The cost per visitor is a little difficult to track unless you have a brand new site and you are 100% responsible for traffic, otherwise you are likely to end up in heated discussions trying to prove that you delivered the visitor.

I think you'd be better introducing your client to an SEO expert.

As for the e-mail marketing. Sending e-mails opt in/out is only part of the jigsaw. What about tracking, click through rate, bounce rate, pass along rate ? If you must go down the route of providing the service, I'd suggest you offer it as an ASP service.

[aschrage]

Response to webdiversity:

> ...if you are going to do the SEO properly it's going to cost some money.

It appears the thing I should have been more clear about is what the company is--its a two person consulting operation. This company has considerable marketing expertise, strong credentials, and well established credibility (it's just not in the area of computers). I think if I just give away some of their lesser ideas as a free online resource, I should be able to generate at least a little traffic (50 unique visitors/day?) with no expenditure of cash. Is this a good assumption?

Once they see even that small amount of traffic and get some real feedback from visitors, I think it will be much easier to get them to spend on SEO services. Then I can get a real SEO involved.
Thanks for your help.