Signing Off

[itrainu]

I have heard people over and over talk about signing off each stage of the way. I understand signing a contract in the beginning, but am not sure where to go from there.

I landed a deal with a company today that is going to pay me Xdollars every month. They are less concerned with what I do every month than they are with seeing a ROI.

I will draw up a proposal today about preliminary work - keyword research, analyzing past traffic logs, etc. which is basically a detail of what I will do and what will be a deliverable for them at the end of one month. I will also include dates - in other words, if I give them one week to get me access to traffic logs, and they take two weeks, my deadline has the right to be extended by that period of time. They are going to pay to play starting immediately...even though I have not done keyword research yet. I will document their budget, and explictly state that no level of success can be benchmarked or expected until after preliminary research.

At the end of my preliminary research I will meet with their team to determine the website strategy...what needs to be changed, etc. They will do the work with me serving as a coach or guide. At the end of that meeting I will drop up a new proposal - the expectation is that my monthly $$ will remain the same, but this provides an opportunity to review that.

So I am thinking two signoffs here. What does anyone else think or what would you do? We are looking at a year long relationship with either monthly or quarterly reporting on increases in visitors, sales, etc.

Thanks! I'm excited and hope I can live up to this ;-)

itrainu

[itrainu]

hmmm...guess I'll have to respond to myself ;-( Have I done something wrong? Wrong forum? It has happened a couple of times that I post and don't get any responses.

Or it's just not a topic of interest ;-)

itrainu

[ukgimp]

Definitely of interest.

There have been some similar threads heres one

[webmasterworld.com...]

Also

[webmasterworld.com...]

Check out Brotherhood_of_lan's post it has links to other threads that may help.

Cheers

[Travoli]

perfect forum, itrainu. I dunno why I missed this the first time around.

So, you are working for a client that is not as concerned about signing off at each step of the process, as the ROI you deliver? Sounds like the perfect relationship to me. Just make sure you get at least some money up front, and then again when your project is complete. I would also send them monthly reports, to keep in touch and keep your name in front of them. They may know other potential clients.

If I am reading your post correctly, you mention being a monthly guide. Make sure to set a number of monthly appointments or maximum monthly hours before additional charges will need to be paid.

[itrainu]

Thanks for the links to the other posts - I will check those out!

The client "signed" the first agreement! BTW, I wrote my own agreement based on resources around here and on the web. Took forever *grin* But it will be a staple for future use. I'd be willing to strip (the content) and share the basic structure if anyone would like! Just sticky me and give me a couple of days ;-)
I have already found new things that I will need to add in the future - like all content delivered must be in electronic form. I know, I know...isn't it obvious? Well wanna make sure ;-)

I was on my way to sign (client already signed)and my car died! *argh* I'll get there in a day or two. For now we have a verbal agreement and via email. We agreed upon payment monthly, on the 15th of the month, and I indicated in the agreement that as a consultant, the work will be done at my discretion ;-)

itrainu