How to charge for Adwords Marketing job

[skuba]

Hi,
I always have this problem. I don't know how to charge.
Now, a client which i have done organic SEO work wants me to do adwords for them.

For the SEO work I charged by hour. Half (estimated)before and half after.

But for adwords I think it would be stupid to do that. Because I can take care of creating the ads fast. But the job requires skills that I have. Also it requires monitoring.

Should I charge a monthly fee (account style) to do all internet matketing for them. Regardless if it's adwords, overture, froogle, comparison sites?

How do you do that?

How should I calculate that fee? Based on hours?

The thing is that, yes, there is monitoring envolved, but whattakes more time is the first creation, of ads, feeds, etc..The next months are easier.

Also, once the client sees that his ads are showing, his listings on comparison sites, etc..they can don't need you any more. So what should I do?

I am sure a lot of you guys do that kind of work, and could give me some advice.

Thanks a lot for sharing you knowledge.

[skuba]

I really would appreciate some advice here. Could anybody help?
Thanks

[exmoorbeast]

some people charge a commission based on how much they spend. If the spend is small - say 1000 usd a month then you could charge a set up fee and 20% of spend.

If the client spends a huge amaount then it would obviously be worth charging a smaller %.

Why not find out the budget and then email 10 companies in your league to see what they charge.

There are certainly a few people that hang out here that charge, and some of their web sites have pricing matrices.

best of luck

[Robsp]

Skuba,

We charge flat monthly fees. Don't go with traffic percentages as in a good campaign the objective should not be to maximize on clicks but on conversions. More often than not our clients end up paying less to G and get (much) more conversions due to our efforts.

Startup fees are a good idea too but waive them when they commit to longer periods.

My 2cts
Rob

[exmoorbeast]

I agree with Robsp there...however it is industry practice to go for % of ad spend.

For instance I know someone that manages a client and they just always have to be number one, regardless of the cost. It takes my friend a while to keep them up there and they know this and pay him 15% for doing so.

It's really horses for courses. Another person I know does it free and collects a commission of the sales that he generates for them - they pay the Adwords bill, he collects on the sales.

[addvisors]

Hi,

Our company is using several different models, depending on the client and their temper.

For example we handle media agencies, and after a few different models we ended up using a click-addon scale, which means the more clicks, the less markup on each click.

We handle clients that are billed on CPA, which means that we handle all the expenses to Google, and only bill the client per download, signup, sale etc.

I always find the CPA, to be the most fair model, as every part of the chain is interested in maximising ROI. Unfortunately we often decline CPA, simply because the client cannot handle this kind of tracking, or even more simply, because the clients website is too bad.

I find that flat fee and fixed prices end up being a conflict of interests, as the client has a different goal than the SEM company, simply because in each case there is no "carrot" for the SEM.

Hope this makes sense.

Kim

[jetteroheller]

Advertising agencies take usual some % of the budget.

For this, they place and monitor all the ads.

[skuba]

I contacted my client and said that I would like to charge by a percentage of the marketing budget.
He replied that they are starting to sales fluctuate a lot, so he would prefer to pay me the hour, like he did on the previous job.

I tried to explain that the percentage would be the best deal for nboth of us, since I will do the best to increase their sales, and the most successfull I am, more money they make, and more they raise the marketing budget. But, yeah, didn't work.

So he wants to pay by hour. Should I try to get also paid something like a dollar per conversion? I would like to somehow have a participation on the sales.

Also, I said that this project would require monitoring, so he said I could monitor and charge by the hour.

Any other suggestion?

Thanks a lot

[anallawalla]

When I ran my own business doing this, I charged a daily rate and it was for all SEM, not just PPC, or just SEO. I was in effect a remote employee. This was accumulated over a week, e.g. 5 days x 1 hr = bill for 1 day -- some weeks I worked 7 days x 4-6 hours, but always documented as a total.

For pure PPC, I too would have set a monthly fee.

[skuba]

so, basically you were charging by hour.

Now I would be doing PPC only, but I have done SEO already. And will add their products to price comparison sites , froogle, etc.. after the PPC project.

[bostonseo]

I would charge by the hour; that's what I do. Going by % of budget can backfire on you if a client has a ton of terms to manage and are all very inexpensive. I've encountered it.