Right price or Rip off?

Need insight and opinions on SEM spend.

[Insiteman]

We are a smal start up and we hired an expert in Search marketing to help us develop a PPC campaign. This expert has been working for 2.5 months and has charged us $20,000.

What did we get for the money? Over 2.5 million keywords focused on our core products based on a list of around 40,000 tha we provided to him. He also developed 4 product campaigns, 550 Ad groups and around 1600 Key word Ads. He will also be creating the URL's for our site based on the keywords, mapped to produts, list that we will provide him.

He will not map the URL's to keyword ads or upload the ads and keywords to the search engines. Nor will he set us up with accounts at the search engines.

So is that a fair price? If not what might we expect to have received for $20K?

A second question: Can we reasonably manage a lst of over 400,000 keywords across the major SE's ourselves with little experiance? Do we need a program to do this? Or should we hire a company/professional? How much should we be lookig to spend to ensure that we stay within a predetermined CPC while maximizing our conversion rate?

Thanks SO MUCH!
Matt

[paladin]

A lot depends on what you agreed to with that person before you started.

That aside for a minute, you can do the math on the number of hours worked to see if the total cost makes sense. Assuming that the expert you hired worked for you full time for the 2.5 months that would be 450 hours of work (180 hours x 2.5 months). Divide the $20k by 450 hours and you get just over $44 per hour. Which I feel is a reasonable hourly rate for a SEM expert - again assuming that the person worked full time for you.

That said, it is not just about filling hours. Did the you and the "expert" come to an agreement on what the final goal would be prior to starting? Or was it a less formal thing like I'll do SEM stuff for you at a cost of $20k.

Regaring if to do the work in house or outsource - that is a business decision you will have to make. I would NOT suggest for a SEM beginner to manage a campaign of the size you describe. What is your estimted spend in the PPC engines? You should decide if to go with an outsourced company (SEM firm) or hire a professional to work for you full time to manage it.

[dBishop]

Managing a campaign like this with no experience would be difficult but not impossible. It really depends on how much you value your own time and how much work time you want to spend working your way up the learning curve.

You also don't mention anything about the results of the campaign you 'purchased' for $20k. If it is working and generating results it is worth a great deal more than if it is not.

Another consideration might be to see if your current vendor or another vendor will work with you on some kind of 'value' or 'pay for performance' basis. This could be much more valuable to you, especially in the startup phase.