Internet Consultant Fees | Value of SEO Consultant

Business is Business

Yes, I understand business is business but I also believe the things that I share with you will benefit your company for a lifetime. Long after our business agreement ends, and towards that end I want to be your friend. After thirty years in business, I have earned the right to decide whom I do business with; just as you have the right to decide whether you want to do business with me. I want you first to understand me as a person, since I often have to tell you things you need to hear, and not what you want to hear!

Consulting Service Fees

My fees can be worked out in several ways;

1. Hours,
2. Days,
3. Projects and
4. Expert opinions

My fee strategy

Hourly ($125 per hour)

My hourly fees are setup to cover my benefits, my hourly wage, and my out of pocket expenses, continuing education, and administration time.

Based on the national average an internet-marketing manager with five years experience is approximately $60,000 a year, plus $15,000 in benefits.

Total Compensation would be $75,000 a year.

In my case I have triple that rate to cover

My real wage,

My expenses, and

Continuing education / Administration

($60,000 salary + $15,000 benefits) / (48 weeks * 40 hours) =

= $75,000 / 1920 = $39.06

= 78.12, rounded up to $80 per hour

Or $39.06 x 3 = $117.18, rounded to $120 per hour.

Daily rate for Internet Marketing Consulting Services

To set my daily rate, I simply multiply the hours I work in a day by the hourly rate from the above example.

6 hours * 125 hourly rate = $750

I generally discount that rate 25% for existing clients

Consulting fees for Optimized Web site

I estimate the total number of hours I expect to spend on a project based on the number of competitors in your industry.

Here is how I arrived at that figure:

Let’s say your website is not generating quality traffic, you call me to help you figure out why you are not listed on the search engines for a specific phase or term, and I tell you each page needs to have relevant content, and give you a list of key word phases.

The next day in your email, you get an Pay Pal invoice from me for $750. That’s 6 hours of work. Naturally, you are going to wants me to itemize what I did.

Here is what that invoice would look like:

Looking at your website source code, $31.25

Knowing what to do to fix it $718.25

Total $750.00

Performance Based Consulting

Often I am presented with an opportunity to share future revenue generated by the website.

However, I try to steer clear of these types of agreements because the performance in other areas of your business may affect the leads that are generated by the website. With internet marketing, it may take months or more to see the results of the work, meaning that I will not see any revenue for a long period, effectively giving you an interest-free loan.

I have found that many companies will not cooperate in implementing my full recommendations, and that compromises my ability to reach the goals that I project the site can achieve.

In addition to that I have no way of checking to see whether the leads that are coming from the web site are being followed-up in a timely manner. Finally I can not be sure that the results are being reported accurately?

But the main reason I seldom enter into these types of agreements is that is shifts my focus from high quality planning to short-term gains. In essence, I become a partner by sharing in the client's risk, and often I lose my objectivity.

Therefore, if my clients are interested in a profit share arrangement I reduce my fees in half and get a base, plus performance pay or share of ownership.

Determining Billable Hours for an Annual retainer

As we saw above there are approximately 1,920 billable hours in a year. However what percentage of my time will be spent on work that brings in money, as opposed to work that helps my client for years to come but for which I am not actually paid.

100% possible hours (1,920)

-20% spent on administration, research, composing spread sheets etc

-20% spent on key word research, talking to the programmers, content management, copy review

50% spent actually working on the website doing the optimization.

1,920 Hours X 50% utilization rate = 960 billable hours

Conclusion

It is important to note that the above fees are not all-pure profit there are a number of expenses associated with my business;

Office Space ($400 a month)

Utilities ($150 per month)

Wireless Internet Access ($50 per month)

Cellular Phone ($100 per month)

Laptop Computer ($50 per month depreciation)

Printer cartridges ($54 per month)

Paper / Business Cards / Brochures ($25 per month)

Legal services ($300 per month retainer)

Office furniture

Business License / Permits

Car Insurance ($75 per month)

Health Insurance ($400 per month)

Advertising / Marketing ($100 per month)

Continuing Education (Webinars. Pod Casts)

Meetings conference/ trade shows

Therefore if you divide the total cost of my overhead by my billable hours for one year I can bill about 960 hours and divide that by my over head = $2.08 per hour and add that to my hourly rate

My fees are $125 per hour.