Adwords Professionals, How do you charge your clients?

[thegreatpretender]

How do your charge clients?

1. Commission basis
2. Per campaign
3. Marking up price
4. Per hour, per day, per month
5. Other_____

and how much?

Thanks for sharing.

[poster_boy]

6. revenue / profit share
7. % of spend

[sharbel]

I dont offer this service, but I did work with a company on a project that managed an Adwords account. They had an upfront fee, plus 10% of the monthly spend. I thought it was really expensive for the amount of work they did but the client was happy to pay it..

[zoomer]

Another way is to charge a few cents a click--for example one account manager I know charges .08 cents a click up to 1000 clicks, then .02 cents for every click over 1000. (I personally don't like that method since you would be charging the same amount if the click is .05 cents or $50.00.)

Most have a start-up fee + an on-going monthly management fee. However, there are not any "industry standards", you can charge whatever you like.

[eWhisper]

Couple other threads on the subject:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

[wheel]

Initial (and higher) setup fee, then a lower flat monthly fee. However in my research I understood that a lot of people charge like 15% of spend, then require a minimum monthly spend.

[eWhisper]

Just a quick FYI on some of the +$0.0x/click pricing models.

These are often additional fees because of 3rd party resources the agency is paying.

The way 3rd party apps are paid (pass through cost, agency absorbs cost in pricing, agency adds on pricing variables, etc) can also effect how the pricing looks.

[grigoroo]

My agency has but a single large search marketing client, an existing marketing and advertising client who asked us to take over their search marketing effort because they were not doing well on their own. We charge them a flat monthly fee to manage a few thousand KWs on Google and Yahoo. This four figure fee allows us to dedicate a person to their campaign setup, maintenance and management. We provide reports, data and direction that are key to their search marketing success, which has been impressive.

Their business is online merchandising so there are seasonal highs and lows to their spending. In January our fee might appear high, but in December it looks cheap. Overall our fee works out to be something less than 5% of their spend. We deliver a significant volume of their overall traffic, so they are very satisfied.

They spent well over a million dollars this year on search marketing, so my American Express points are huge, but otherwise I don't benefit from their increased spending. However, when they inquired about adding AskJeeves to our program, I told them how I'd raise their fees 30% to capture about 3% more volume and they backed off quickly.

If I were approached by a small client (under $1000 per month), I'd probably have to base my charges on the number of KWs I'd be managing and the likelihood that they would require frequent changes. It certainly wouldn't be 5% of their spend if they had a thousand KWs.

When determining pricing structure, it is important to provide good value. Don't assume that because they are unfamiliar with search marketing, your clients will cheerfully overpay for long. Eventually they will recognize whether they are getting good value or not. Don't count on this taking them very long.