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[Progress] Replacing My Income With Adwords Freelancing.

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PizzaOnTheRoof

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Hope everyone is doing well,

I've decided to take a step towards controlling my future by starting to freelance with Google Adwords. I am a college student with virtually zero experience but I hope to take this far enough to replace my current income plus some. Please read the post for a further breakdown.

Why:

As the title reads, my main goal is to replace my small $1,500/month gross income by freelancing with Adwords. It's not a terribly large amount so I think it is definitely doable.

I've also chosen Adwords because I feel that understanding Adwords/PPC will give me an advantage in any future business ventures. Using the skills I'm about to learn, I'll be able to launch, test, and sell my future products or services.

I also think these skills will transfer over to other platforms such as Facebook Ads and Bing Ads if I eventually choose to use them.

How:
I am currently going to study this course (no offense to @Andy Black, I'm sure his is great, I just can't afford it right now), for the next coming weeks.

Hopefully, I'll be able to end it with enough information to approach nonprofits, about managing their accounts since they get free Adwords credit anyway.

Here is my step-by-step plan: (Suggestions are appreciated!)
  1. Start and finish the course
  2. Aquire needed certifications
  3. Approach charities/nonprofits about managing their Adwords accounts
  4. Build up a portfolio of successful work
  5. Approach businesses about managing their accounts for a small fee OR apply for a remote job at an agency (probably the fastest way)
  6. Keep building my portfolio of success stories
  7. Approach bigger clients for larger fees (3 clients at $500/mo = $1,500/mo)
  8. Develop a personal brand and keep scaling
Ideally, I would like for all of this to happen within the next 6 months.
Update: See my comment below for a revised plan of action.

My GF and I are planning a vacation for next March and I also have a small amount to credit card debt.

If any of you have suggestions or advice I would greatly appreciate it! Wish me luck!
 
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lowtek

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Isaac's course is great. I used it to do the same thing - you'll learn enough to be helpful to people for sure.

You don't need certifications. It never really came up when i was adwords freelancing, so skip #2. I don't think @Andy Black would recommend it either.

You can also try to get started on Upwork, in parallel to #3. I got my start there, and it's a reasonable platform to find work in the field. Lots of people outsource to upwork freelancers, so it may as well be you.

6 months is too lenient. You can get all this going in 90 days, provided you work at it diligently.
 

PizzaOnTheRoof

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Isaac's course is great. I used it to do the same thing - you'll learn enough to be helpful to people for sure.

You don't need certifications. It never really came up when i was adwords freelancing, so skip #2. I don't think @Andy Black would recommend it either.

You can also try to get started on Upwork, in parallel to #3. I got my start there, and it's a reasonable platform to find work in the field. Lots of people outsource to upwork freelancers, so it may as well be you.

6 months is too lenient. You can get all this going in 90 days, provided you work at it diligently.

Wow! Thank you for replying with some great news, and the positive feedback on the course, I was a bit worried it would be too basic or saturated because it's the #1 course.

It's good to hear that I could get this going in just 90 days, I was trying not to get my hopes up but it seems like a short deadline could be the kick in the a$$ that I need.

I'll nix the certs for now, I only included them as a resume booster but then again, results are king.

I'll post a comment with my revised plan of action. Thanks again lowtek!
 

PizzaOnTheRoof

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Thanks to lowtek, I have decided to revise my plan of action.

Here is my revised step-by-step plan:
  1. Start and finish the course
  2. Approach businesses to work for free
  3. Create an Upwork account
  4. Send proposals to potential clients on Upwork at a low hourly rate ($10/hr then increased)
  5. Start building a portfolio of work from Upwork + free work
  6. Approach businesses with monthly retainer
  7. Aquire enough clients to = $1,500/mo
All of this will be done in just 90 days. No excuses.
 
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lowtek

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Thanks to lowtek, I have decided to revise my plan of action.

Here is my revised step-by-step plan:
  1. Start and finish the course
  2. Create an Upwork account
  3. Approach nonprofits
  4. Send proposals to potential clients on Upwork (slim chance as a beginner but it can't hurt)
  5. Start building a portfolio of work
  6. Approach real businesses
  7. Aquire 3 clients at $500/mo each = $1,500/mo
All of this will be done in just 90 days. No excuses.

One caveat, you MIGHT need a cert to work with nonprofits, if you want to get the free ad spend for them. If so, I would skip that step and just focus on getting paying clients.
 

PizzaOnTheRoof

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One caveat, you MIGHT need a cert to work with nonprofits, if you want to get the free ad spend for them. If so, I would skip that step and just focus on getting paying clients.

Ah don't make me revise it again!

Just kidding.

When you started out, how did you gain experience? Did you just jump in with paid clients?

Edit: Here are the guidelines for the Adwords grant. I'm starting to think it may not be the best way to go.
  • Your ads will be entirely text-based (no videos or images).
  • They’ll appear only on Google search results pages, in positions below the ads of paying advertisers.
  • All campaigns must be keyword-targeted.
  • Your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) will be $2.00 USD.
  • You’ll receive $10,000 USD (up to $40,000 USD for Grantspro participants) of in-kind AdWords advertising each month.
 
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Duane

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Thanks to lowtek, I have decided to revise my plan of action.

Here is my revised step-by-step plan:
  1. Start and finish the course
  2. Create an Upwork account
  3. Approach nonprofits
  4. Send proposals to potential clients on Upwork (slim chance as a beginner but it can't hurt)
  5. Start building a portfolio of work
  6. Approach real businesses
  7. Aquire 3 clients at $500/mo each = $1,500/mo
All of this will be done in just 90 days. No excuses.

A year ago I hired someone to manage my google adwords for $500/month and about a month in realized he was pretty new to the game and terminated services with him shortly after.

He was putting in the time and delivering some results, but not the results I was expecting for the price. I ran my own ads after that and was getting better results than he was and could put that $500/month into adspend rather than that guy.


Nobody is going to want to pay you $500/month out of their advertising budget if you can't deliver them a solid increase in revenue from adwords without them needing to increase their adspend. You can definitely do this once you put in the time and get the experience, but I would heavily discount your rates while you are still learning or even help people for free.

That way you can get your experience and people won't be unsatisfied for their investment in your company while you get a feel for things. Sure the courses will help, but you won't learn better than actually doing it hands on with real money.

Just throwing out random numbers here, but "Special Offer of $100/month for 3 months, after that, it's back to our standard rate of $300/month"
 
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PizzaOnTheRoof

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A year ago I hired someone to manage my google adwords for $500/month and about a month in realized he was pretty new to the game and terminated services with him shortly after.

He was putting in the time and delivering some results, but not the results I was expecting for the price. I ran my own ads after that and was getting better results than he was and could put that $500/month into adspend rather than that guy.


Nobody is going to want to pay you $500/month out of their advertising budget if you can't deliver them a solid increase in revenue from adwords without them needing to increase their adspend. You can definitely do this once you put in the time and get the experience, but I would heavily discount your rates while you are still learning or even help people for free.

That way you can get your experience and people won't be unsatisfied for their investment in your company while you get a feel for things. Sure the courses will help, but you won't learn better than actually doing it hands on with real money.

Just throwing out random numbers here, but "Special Offer of $100/month for 3 months, after that, it's back to our standard rate of $300/month"

Good idea. That's why I wanted to approach nonprofits with the Adwords grant because they have no skin in the game and I get to gain experience.

I like the idea of discounting my rates at first, but now I'm thinking Upwork may be the best option starting out because it's hourly based. I can still charge more than I'm currently making at my job ($11/hr) yet the client won't feel ripped off.

How does this strategy sound?

Thanks for the reply!
 

lowtek

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Good idea. That's why I wanted to approach nonprofits with the Adwords grant because they have no skin in the game and I get to gain experience.

I like the idea of discounting my rates at first, but now I'm thinking Upwork may be the best option starting out because it's hourly based. I can still charge more than I'm currently making at my job ($11/hr) yet the client won't feel ripped off.

How does this strategy sound?

Thanks for the reply!

whether or not someone feels ripped off is dependent on results, not price. If you tank their sales, it doesn't matter if you only charged them $0.01 / hour.

You can also get a job for an agency, and gain experience that way. Again, you'll probably make more than $11 / hour.

On Upwork, it's hard to charge high rates out of the gate. You may need to work for peanuts for a few weeks to build up your portfolio. I started out ghost writing, and delivered quality results to build up my profile. When I switched to AdWords, I already had several 5* reviews so it was easier to get more money.
 

Andy Black

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Check out the first radio interview in my signature.

Start with the people nearest to you?

Start with a free case-study? They pay the ad spend, you manage the campaigns?


I picked up my first non-profit a couple of weeks ago. It’s tricky. We have to get a 5% CTR but the max bid price is capped at $2.

Don’t pick non-profits just because you think it’s easier to sign them up.

I suggest helping someone amongst your close friends and family.
 
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eliquid

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A large majority of the Google grants clients I had, were just way too much hassle for the money.

I dropped that like a hot potato years ago. You however, may like it to get started and gain experience.

They always seemed to have the least amount of money, but the most amount of need/problems.

You mileage may differ though.
 
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eliquid

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Nobody is going to want to pay you $500/month out of their advertising budget if you can't deliver them a solid increase in revenue from adwords without them needing to increase their adspend. You can definitely do this once you put in the time and get the experience, but I would heavily discount your rates while you are still learning or even help people for free.

I'd take this with a grain of salt.

A $500 fee is pretty low in PPC. Many people would pay this just to offload the task of PPC management to someone else so they don't have to upkeep and think about it. Not just to get a solid return only.

This would go under "saving people time" bucket.

Also many times, you do need to also increase your spend even if you just hired someone to take over. It's near impossible to optimize an account that is already capping out their daily budget at 9am, averages a position of 6.4 every day, and is setup with 100's of broad match keywords in 1 adgroup.

Oh, you want new ads and LP's too? Hello reset to Quality Score.

Once all of the above are fixed, you're going to have to run more spend ( more than likely ) to get the "right data" in at a statistical level. The right data isn't just the data at position 6.4 before 9am Eastern.

You can either spend $10k in ad spend now this month, or $10k over the next 5 months ( including my monthly fee to wait ) to get the data in, but either way you are going to spend more money to do it right a lot of the times. The $10k is just a number I made up, but the point is you will more than likely pay more in ad spend to do things right most times, for most clients.

Your case may have been different, but many of the clients I run into have to up their spend the first 3 months to even be workable. Those that don't, tend to never get anywhere with their accounts.

Those that also don't, tend to not have the right mindset or money to invest in their accounts as they don't understand all the issues at play.

For example, some people just have terrible or mediocre products and services. Why should someone really buy into their services or products?

You can paint a turd with gold paint, but it's still a damn turd. Unless you are going to let me change your services and products, then I have to work around your turd and the fact you don't follow up with your phone calls from clients, which impact my results.

But at $500 a month though, I'm not going to run your business for you and change your products and services and help you learn how to sell to people properly. For that, you're going to give me equity and much more than $500 a month.

.
 

PizzaOnTheRoof

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Check out the first radio interview in my signature.

Start with the people nearest to you?

Start with a free case-study? They pay the ad spend, you manage the campaigns?


I picked up my first non-profit a couple of weeks ago. It’s tricky. We have to get a 5% CTR but the max bid price is capped at $2.

Don’t pick non-profits just because you think it’s easier to sign them up.

I suggest helping someone amongst your close friends and family.

Thanks Andy. I’ve decided to steer clear of the nonprofits for now. Just too much of a hassle.
 
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PizzaOnTheRoof

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A large majority of the Google grants clients I had, were just way too much hassle for the money.

I dropped that like a hot potato years ago. You however, may like it to get started and gain experience.

They always seemed to have the least amount of money, but the most amount of need/problems.

You mileage may differ though.

I’ve decided I’m not going to go after nonprofits for now. Too much of a hassle and with the spend and bid caps, I’m just shooting myself in the foot right out the gate.
I'd take this with a grain of salt.

A $500 fee is pretty low in PPC. Many people would pay this just to offload the task of PPC management to someone else so they don't have to upkeep and think about it. Not just to get a solid return only.

This would go under "saving people time" bucket.

Also many times, you do need to also increase your spend even if you just hired someone to take over. It's near impossible to optimize an account that is already capping out their daily budget at 9am, averages a position of 6.4 every day, and is setup with 100's of broad match keywords in 1 adgroup.

Oh, you want new ads and LP's too? Hello reset to Quality Score.

Once all of the above are fixed, you're going to have to run more spend ( more than likely ) to get the "right data" in at a statistical level. The right data isn't just the data at position 6.4 before 9am Eastern.

You can either spend $10k in ad spend now this month, or $10k over the next 5 months ( including my monthly fee to wait ) to get the data in, but either way you are going to spend more money to do it right a lot of the times. The $10k is just a number I made up, but the point is you will more than likely pay more in ad spend to do things right most times, for most clients.

Your case may have been different, but many of the clients I run into have to up their spend the first 3 months to even be workable. Those that don't, tend to never get anywhere with their accounts.

Those that also don't, tend to not have the right mindset or money to invest in their accounts as they don't understand all the issues at play.

For example, some people just have terrible or mediocre products and services. Why should someone really buy into their services or products?

You can paint a turd with gold paint, but it's still a damn turd. Unless you are going to let me change your services and products, then I have to work around your turd and the fact you don't follow up with your phone calls from clients, which impact my results.

But at $500 a month though, I'm not going to run your business for you and change your products and services and help you learn how to sell to people properly. For that, you're going to give me equity and much more than $500 a month.

.

This was my train of thought as well. I don’t think $500/month is too much for ppc. Hell, businesses pay agencies thousands of dollars a month as long as it makes sense.

I think I’ll start out on Upwork to gain a little experience, then approach local businesses at a $500/month retainer.

$500/month is enough to say I can handle your accounts and get results, but not enough for them to try to hand over the entire marketing department to me.
 

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Personally, I like starting at the $250/299 per month range for a local service business, but I own the accounts when I do so. If the client owns the accounts then it could be 5x-10x+ that.

It depends what you’re building, but don’t always think you should be charging more.
 

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Personally, I like starting at the $250/299 per month range for a local service business, but I own the accounts when I do so. If the client owns the accounts then it could be 5x-10x+ that.

It depends what you’re building, but don’t always think you should be charging more.

I really like that model. Pricing in the risk that the client will boot you out of the account when the performance is "good enough" makes a lot of sense.

For a beginner, I don't think this is a good model. I think this requires some more advanced sales strategy. The client is certainly going to push back, because in their mind, it's their ads / business. They don't understand that the manager owns the process of managing the ads and getting results. If you aren't experienced enough with account management, it would be very difficult to articulate this convincingly.

Something else to consider is a strongly worded service agreement. You want to set expectations up front, so that the client doesn't cry foul if it doesn't work out. Not every business can thrive with paid advertising; no reason you should suffer as a result.
 
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Personally, I like starting at the $250/299 per month range for a local service business, but I own the accounts when I do so. If the client owns the accounts then it could be 5x-10x+ that.

It depends what you’re building, but don’t always think you should be charging more.
I like this idea too for smaller businesses.

However, Why wouldn’t I want to charge more if they’re still getting a positive ROI?

Ideally I want to have big enough clients who’ll spend a few grand a month on ads because they see the value/ROI.

I don’t think $500/month is a stretch for say, a local kitchen remodeler, which one sale could be $20k. Get them a couple a month and they’ll pay any price.

What are your thoughts?
 

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The best piece of advice I heard about pricing was to "get it wrong".

Just slap a price on it and engage the market. : )
 

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The best piece of advice I heard about pricing was to "get it wrong".

Just slap a price on it and engage the market. : )

Good advice. Just have to go for it. Thanks again Andy :)
 
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The client is certainly going to push back, because in their mind, it's their ads / business. They don't understand that the manager owns the process of managing the ads and getting results. If you aren't experienced enough with account management, it would be very difficult to articulate this convincingly.
Many clients don't expect to own the Google Ads account. When they signup to the Yellow Pages they don't expect to own the listing or page created, and don't expect to own the Google Ads campaigns.


PS: AdWords was rebranded to Google Ads. Which suits me as I called them that all the time anyway.


EDIT: Case in point. I've just come off the phone with a previous client who wants me to take over his Google Ads campaigns again from an agency he no longer trusts. The current agency owns the Google Ads accounts. I asked my new client whether he wanted to own the Google Ads campaigns I will (re?)create for him or not. He said he didn't want to have anything to do with them, he just wants the leads.
 
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Your case may have been different, but many of the clients I run into have to up their spend the first 3 months to even be workable. Those that don't, tend to never get anywhere with their accounts.

Yeah there are a wide range of clients, but I figured as a beginner you wouldn't be trying big complex accounts and go for smaller companies that aren't as complex.

A lot of the companies that reach out to me are typically $500 and under for managing the ads. Shoot I had one company offer to run my ads and have them be displayed 24/7 on google and they will pay for all the clicks and manage the ads for $750/month.

But I run a local service business so it's not that complex at all as we only have 1 location and don't have a large range of services.
 

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Just to let you know, we have one client that pays us €75/mth and about €30/week on Google Ads.

She's a child physio in Dublin. We're delighted to be putting her in touch with babies and children she can help.

Do we want to up our fees on her? Not at all.

Can we make more money out of this? Probably, if we were to provide a similar service to every location in Ireland. We'd probably have to drop our monthly fee because Dublin is by far the biggest location in Ireland, and will likely have the highest search volumes by far.

Hmmm... what about doing it for free? Do you think we could make money charging them nothing?

Maybe we could build a directory that ALL the child physios in the country are delighted to add themselves to?

Maybe we could really help the people of Ireland doing that?

Maybe that could be enough to spearhead a profitable business?



Dan Norris published a great blog post a few months ago saying something like "If your only way to earn more is to charge more, then you're not a business, you're a consultant."


One of my favourite books was "Free" by Chris Anderson (who also wrote "The Long Tail"). Maybe check it out (after you've made some sales of course. Don’t read yet more books when you already know what to do).
 
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I guess it comes down to background experience and future goals.

I won't do MOST local business type PPC accounts.

Nothing wrong with them or the people who service them, it's just not me though. Too many issues in the past like with the Google Grants stuff for me. Again that was my experience. Everyone's milage will be different.

I do have a few I service, but I'm charging them a min of $2k a month. My local business PPC accounts are not 1 man shops or places that service 1-2 locations though. They are "national" local business accounts types. Think a roofer who services the whole country, but wants local presence in each area.

With that, I started looking for minimums. Must be X size, doing X revenue, have a marketing department, be in X industry, etc.

This is where my pricing is different than others. My background and who I work with. All based on my past experiences working with clients.

On another note, I have a philosophy that maybe others do not have.

That is, I am helping you build your business. So I want to keep getting paid for that.

After a couple months once we have you steamrolling along, you could drop me like a hot potato for any reason you dream up and now you have a "marketing department in a box" that will keep making you money for a while after I get the boot. It might even keep working for years ( I know of a couple accounts that still are ), but I am not getting paid for it.

My higher prices help buffer me in those situations. They do happen. If someone decides to drop me after 2-3 months, I at least charged them enough upfront to feel like I made enough for the months they will earn with the account that I don't get credit/paid for.

But, my background and experience has NOT been in owning the account either. See how that changes the perspective in what I charge monthly? If I owned the account, maybe when someone dropped I could just plug another similar same client into it? In this manner, I could MAYBE charge less monthly as a fee.

Also, I am generally more than just turning dials in their account like a lot of other consultants ( not saying anyone here is, I am speaking generally ).

I'm typically working on new LPs, funnels, backend of the products for upsells, and increasing LTV. A lot of consultants don't help build the business, they just work the PPC account.

Again, comes down to background and your personal past experience.

I've learned through personal experience that some companies go into the agreement knowing they will only have you for 3-4 months, but they don't always share that with you upfront. I've set up numerous new accounts, got it rolling along, doing really well, and then got dropped because they "hired" an intern or a junior out of college and wanted them to now take it over.

They wanted to take it "internal" now and don't want to keep paying a consultant.

This practice is even more common in Higher Ed with universities and colleges. I get the account up to $200-500k in ad spend monthly and cranking out applications for new students left and right and the school starts to freak out when they get their bill from me. They start to think they can't afford a consultant and instead could take in 2-3 internal juniors for the same price and then do just that.

The companies think you can set up the shell and get it going, and then they can save money by hiring in someone cheaper to now "steer the ship along" once you got it built and out of the port. Now I'm having to lose revenue....

Maybe that helps you in seeing how I price differently.

For example, I closed a pretty big account a while ago for a company everyone on this forum would know the name of.. no matter where in the world you live.

In a few weeks, I've already drastically improved the account and increased the bottom line. Something 3 PPC guys working on the account for 2+ years ( and have 5 years experience each ) could not do.

In 90 days, I could get the boot. It happens. Leadership changes, budgets change, the guys I am making look bad start to find reasons to "hate me" to protect their job and salary and spread gossip and backstabbing, etc. I've seen it all sadly.

I'm def. charging a high price tag. If I get the boot in 90 days for X reason, this is going to keep working for them and working pretty damn well. I should still keep getting that piece of the pie even if I get the boot. This is why I have a high min and have to be working on larger accounts, to protect that side of it.

If you do an excellent job, you can still lose the account. My income shouldn't suffer though.

I couldn't really do that at the sub $500 level unless I changed my business model. Not sure if I want to do that just yet, but it could be a possibility.

Again, background and your personal past experience.

What's going to be your offering, target market, future goals, and style? That will probably help you a lot.
.
 
Last edited:

Andy Black

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I guess it comes down to background experience and future goals.

I won't do MOST local business type PPC accounts.

Nothing wrong with them or the people who service them, it's just not me though. Too many issues in the past like with the Google Grants stuff for me. Again that was my experience. Everyone's milage will be different.

I do have a few I service, but I'm charging them a min of $2k a month. My local business PPC accounts are not 1 man shops or places that service 1-2 locations though. They are "national" local business accounts types. Think a roofer who services the whole country, but wants local presence in each area.

With that, I started looking for minimums. Must be X size, doing X revenue, have a marketing department, be in X industry, etc.

This is where my pricing is different than others. My background and who I work with. All based on my past experiences working with clients.

On another note, I have a philosophy that maybe others do not have.

That is, I am helping you build your business. So I want to keep getting paid for that.

After a couple months once we have you steamrolling along, you could drop me like a hot potato for any reason you dream up and now you have a "marketing department in a box" that will keep making you money for a while after I get the boot. It might even keep working for years ( I know of a couple accounts that still are ), but I am not getting paid for it.

My higher prices help buffer me in those situations. They do happen. If someone decides to drop me after 2-3 months, I at least charged them enough upfront to feel like I made enough for the months they will earn with the account that I don't get credit/paid for.

But, my background and experience has NOT been in owning the account either. See how that changes the perspective in what I charge monthly? If I owned the account, maybe when someone dropped I could just plug another similar same client into it? In this manner, I could MAYBE charge less monthly as a fee.

Also, I am generally more than just turning dials in their account like a lot of other consultants ( not saying anyone here is, I am speaking generally ).

I'm typically working on new LPs, funnels, backend of the products for upsells, and increasing LTV. A lot of consultants don't help build the business, they just work the PPC account.

Again, comes down to background and your personal past experience.

I've learned through personal experience that some companies go into the agreement knowing they will only have you for 3-4 months, but they don't always share that with you upfront. I've set up numerous new accounts, got it rolling along, doing really well, and then got dropped because they "hired" an intern or a junior out of college and wanted them to now take it over.

They wanted to take it "internal" now and don't want to keep paying a consultant.

This practice is even more common in Higher Ed with universities and colleges. I get the account up to $200-500k in ad spend monthly and cranking out applications for new students left and right and the school starts to freak out when they get their bill from me. They start to think they can't afford a consultant and instead could take in 2-3 internal juniors for the same price and then do just that.

The companies think you can set up the shell and get it going, and then they can save money by hiring in someone cheaper to now "steer the ship along" once you got it built and out of the port. Now I'm having to lose revenue....

Maybe that helps you in seeing how I price differently.

For example, I closed a pretty big account a while ago for a company everyone on this forum would know the name of.. no matter where in the world you live.

In a few weeks, I've already drastically improved the account and increased the bottom line. Something 3 PPC guys working on the account for 2+ years ( and have 5 years experience each ) could not do.

In 90 days, I could get the boot. It happens. Leadership changes, budgets change, the guys I am making look bad start to find reasons to "hate me" to protect their job and salary and spread gossip and backstabbing, etc. I've seen it all sadly.

I'm def. charging a high price tag. If I get the boot in 90 days for X reason, this is going to keep working for them and working pretty damn well. I should still keep getting that piece of the pie even if I get the boot. This is why I have a high min and have to be working on larger accounts, to protect that side of it.

If you do an excellent job, you can still lose the account. My income shouldn't suffer though.

I couldn't really do that at the sub $500 level unless I changed my business model. Not sure if I want to do that just yet, but it could be a possibility.

Again, background and your personal past experience.

What's going to be your offering, target market, future goals, and style? That will probably help you a lot.
.
Lol. I know that story too.

“Everything’s going great. We’re going to get our intern to manage the accounts now. Thanks for your help, you’re a gent Andy.”
 

PizzaOnTheRoof

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I guess it comes down to background experience and future goals.

I won't do MOST local business type PPC accounts.

Nothing wrong with them or the people who service them, it's just not me though. Too many issues in the past like with the Google Grants stuff for me. Again that was my experience. Everyone's milage will be different.

I do have a few I service, but I'm charging them a min of $2k a month. My local business PPC accounts are not 1 man shops or places that service 1-2 locations though. They are "national" local business accounts types. Think a roofer who services the whole country, but wants local presence in each area.

With that, I started looking for minimums. Must be X size, doing X revenue, have a marketing department, be in X industry, etc.

This is where my pricing is different than others. My background and who I work with. All based on my past experiences working with clients.

On another note, I have a philosophy that maybe others do not have.

That is, I am helping you build your business. So I want to keep getting paid for that.

After a couple months once we have you steamrolling along, you could drop me like a hot potato for any reason you dream up and now you have a "marketing department in a box" that will keep making you money for a while after I get the boot. It might even keep working for years ( I know of a couple accounts that still are ), but I am not getting paid for it.

My higher prices help buffer me in those situations. They do happen. If someone decides to drop me after 2-3 months, I at least charged them enough upfront to feel like I made enough for the months they will earn with the account that I don't get credit/paid for.

But, my background and experience has NOT been in owning the account either. See how that changes the perspective in what I charge monthly? If I owned the account, maybe when someone dropped I could just plug another similar same client into it? In this manner, I could MAYBE charge less monthly as a fee.

Also, I am generally more than just turning dials in their account like a lot of other consultants ( not saying anyone here is, I am speaking generally ).

I'm typically working on new LPs, funnels, backend of the products for upsells, and increasing LTV. A lot of consultants don't help build the business, they just work the PPC account.

Again, comes down to background and your personal past experience.

I've learned through personal experience that some companies go into the agreement knowing they will only have you for 3-4 months, but they don't always share that with you upfront. I've set up numerous new accounts, got it rolling along, doing really well, and then got dropped because they "hired" an intern or a junior out of college and wanted them to now take it over.

They wanted to take it "internal" now and don't want to keep paying a consultant.

This practice is even more common in Higher Ed with universities and colleges. I get the account up to $200-500k in ad spend monthly and cranking out applications for new students left and right and the school starts to freak out when they get their bill from me. They start to think they can't afford a consultant and instead could take in 2-3 internal juniors for the same price and then do just that.

The companies think you can set up the shell and get it going, and then they can save money by hiring in someone cheaper to now "steer the ship along" once you got it built and out of the port. Now I'm having to lose revenue....

Maybe that helps you in seeing how I price differently.

For example, I closed a pretty big account a while ago for a company everyone on this forum would know the name of.. no matter where in the world you live.

In a few weeks, I've already drastically improved the account and increased the bottom line. Something 3 PPC guys working on the account for 2+ years ( and have 5 years experience each ) could not do.

In 90 days, I could get the boot. It happens. Leadership changes, budgets change, the guys I am making look bad start to find reasons to "hate me" to protect their job and salary and spread gossip and backstabbing, etc. I've seen it all sadly.

I'm def. charging a high price tag. If I get the boot in 90 days for X reason, this is going to keep working for them and working pretty damn well. I should still keep getting that piece of the pie even if I get the boot. This is why I have a high min and have to be working on larger accounts, to protect that side of it.

If you do an excellent job, you can still lose the account. My income shouldn't suffer though.

I couldn't really do that at the sub $500 level unless I changed my business model. Not sure if I want to do that just yet, but it could be a possibility.

Again, background and your personal past experience.

What's going to be your offering, target market, future goals, and style? That will probably help you a lot.
.

Well you just convinced me to own the clients accounts starting off then lol
 
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PizzaOnTheRoof

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Lol. I know that story too.

“Everything’s going great. We’re going to get our intern to manage the accounts now. Thanks for your help, you’re a gent Andy.”

Until you get a call 3 months later from them wanting you back because somehow the bosses nephew couldn’t manage the accounts like you.
 

Andy Black

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Until you get a call 3 months later from them wanting you back because somehow the bosses nephew couldn’t manage the accounts like you.
Yep. I fielded one of those calls last night. Although it wasn't to take over the project from the boss's nephew but from a different agency they'd gone to.
 

Duane

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I think you make a really good point. You have the experience and knowledge so you should be charging premium prices and looking for the big clients. You have a lot of value you can add.

If someone is new though and doesn't have real experience or a track record, they shouldn't be charging the same amount or going for those big clients.

Coming from a guy that hired a new person that pretended to be something they weren't. I will NEVER recommend them to anyone for the poor experience I got from them.
 
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PizzaOnTheRoof

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I think you make a really good point. You have the experience and knowledge so you should be charging premium prices and looking for the big clients. You have a lot of value you can add.

If someone is new though and doesn't have real experience or a track record, they shouldn't be charging the same amount or going for those big clients.

Coming from a guy that hired a new person that pretended to be something they weren't. I will NEVER recommend them to anyone for the poor experience I got from them.
Thanks Duane, this is my thought as well.

I think once I finish the course I'll contact some businesses about working for say, $100/mo + positive feedback if I do a good job. I'll just be upfront and tell them that I'm a beginner but I am dedicated to their success because in turn that gives me positive feedback/testimonials.
 

PizzaOnTheRoof

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Almost done with section 1 of the course which is by far the longest one. 28 videos averaging 15min each! It's been great so far, can't wait to go more in depth!

I've learned more actionable info in the past 2 days of this course than months of action faking!
 

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