How do freelance PPC managers charge?

April 7, 2008 12:22 PM

How do Adwords/PPC professionals charge to manage a client account? I can't get a straight answer.

I do a lot of PPC management work in-house. I've just been floated the chance to manage a small client's PPC campaign, on a freelance basis. (Yay! Freelance work!) They're a small company, just starting up, with a relatively limited budget.

So, experienced freelance online marketing managers, how do you charge? Flat rate? Monthly retainer? Up front purchase? Percentage of client spend?

I've done freelance work before, but always content management or copywriting. I have no idea if there's an established practice for PPC management.

posted by generichuman to work & money (6 comments total)

We're paying commission to the firm that's managing our Adwords efforts - 15% of our budget paid monthly, I think.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 12:24 PM on April 7

You probably can't get a straight answer because there isn't one. The two guys I know charge hourly. Their services also help you with your website and other alternative forms of marketing like blogging and maintaining content freshness. Hourly charges protect the contractor from having a contract talk his ear off, and protect the client from you overgrowing their spend to make more profit.
posted by SpecialK at 1:20 PM on April 7

Hourly charges protect the contractor from having a contract talk his ear off, and protect the client from you overgrowing their spend to make more profit.

That's been my experience with other freelance work. I just want to see if there's an industry standard practice that I'll look like a n00b ignoring.
posted by generichuman at 1:52 PM on April 7

People in the Sydney SEM market charge a commission on budget, like any other ad agency, scaled to the spend. I.e. the agency fee as %.

For a small client you will probably want to put them on a minimum monthly spend, and dial up the commission. I don't think you want to go for an hourly rate (unless they have an absolutely tiny spend), otherwise when they do start spending more you will miss out. You want to earn from your expertise and value added to their business, not your hours spent in front of a screen.
posted by yt at 5:00 PM on April 7

I charge on according to a tiered fee structure.

I didn't want to charge by the hour, because I work sort of haphazardly - switching between clients as I get ideas, and checking up on things at random intervals. Also, as noted above, I want to make sure I am getting paid for my expertise and experience, and not just my time in front of the screen.

I also was very wary of charging by commission. I felt that a good PPC manager should be striving to LOWER his clients' costs, and getting paid a percentage of the ad-spending would be a conflict of interest.

Ultimately, I settled on a sort of commission-compromise. I came up with a start-up cost and monthly maintenance fee for each of four scenarios: The client spends under $750/month on ads, the client spends $750-$1750; $1750-$3000; $3000 and above. (Note: I don't recall if these are the correct numbers).

I figured that this setup will mean that *on average* I'm making roughly a percentage of the work I put in. So far it's worked nicely. Of course, I wouldn't mind some a greater sample pool to work with...
posted by prophetsearcher at 9:09 AM on April 8

That is:
I charge on according to a tiered fee structure.
or
I charge on according to a tiered fee structure.

posted by prophetsearcher at 9:11 AM on April 8