I’m on a high, wanna know why?
Many of our existing clients have been increasing their monthly budgets…today alone we had 3 clients invest a lot more in our services than they had been investing. Here’s some additional that’s coming in for us from just a few days here:
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Yesterday once client increased his budget by a very large amount.
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This morning one client doubled thier monthly budget.
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And this afternoon another client doubled their monthly spend.
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I just got off the phone with another who is trippling their budget for one month, then doubling.
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Tomorrow I’ve got an all day meeting with another client who, if all goes well, will also be doubling his budget.
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Monday I’ve got another meeting with a client who might also be majorlly increasing thier monthly spend.
Please don’t think I’m bragging…though I have had a skip in my walk the past few days. I am happy, and I hope you don’t mind my sharing.
All these clients have been clients for between ~10 months to 4 years.
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One of these site has totally dominated his keyword industry for about 2 years now. Over the past year they’ve grown from 8 to 25 employees. They are a 100% online shop.
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Another of these sites is from a extremly knowledgable SEO….he’s awesome. He understand what we do, he can do it himself, but he just doesn’t have time. He’s now giving us more sites to work with. He’s a Ninja himself.
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Another one of these guys also dominates his industry and have just given us another site to work with.
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One client is a very old client with so-so rankings…they once dominated (Pre Florida), and are going from a tiny budget to a small budget (but I think I can get them back with this added budget…not too competitive market).
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Another of these clients also dominates thier industry. Their biggest competitor has tried to sign us on but we’re won’t work with competitors. This client has some really good SEO’s on staff who also work at the art of link building.
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Another client has several phrases in the top 5, but really needs more time ($) invested to crack the #1’s.
I think a large part of this success has been a mixture of increasing their rankings (which drives an increase in their ROI), as well as really good reporting and client communication from us to them. Most of these clients have been telling me that they love the reporting and new communication methods that they’re getting from us, in addition to the nice rankings.
We have 4 link building teams here. Each team has 4 link ninjas and one designer. Clients are assigned to a team and they also communicate with the team leaders and have conference calls with the teams. Each month we update the client reports as well.
I’ve got a sample monthly link building client report….it’s a bit dated (they’ve improved since Oct 06), but you can see we do more than just build links, we analyze several aspects of their website and backlinks and we provide a lot of solutions.
We’re also honest about what we’ve been doing with their time, as well as what ads we’ve been able to achieve for the client. I personally don’t know any other competitor who’s services are so transparent.
And the nicest thing is that everything we’ve been building over the last year here has come together so nicely….personally I’m having a great time ….clients are happy, employees are happy, and I’ve never felt better…Man, I’m really feeling lucky!
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34 Responses
I’m jealous… 🙁
Thanks for sharing the samples Jim…
and congratulations 🙂
Jim,
I thought most folks charged a flat rate for their time…how do you charge a flexible amount that allows the client to increase or decrease their spend?
those at the $2500/month level are at $150/hour.
those at the $5000/month and higher level are at $125/hour
the more they spend monthly with us, the more hours we can invest in seeking virgin sites to get ads for them. Also the more hours we invest, the more links we can achieve faster.
It’s basically their monthly budget, minus paid monthly links, and the remainder is divided out into their hourly rate to figure the hours we’re putting in for each client.
monthly reporting the first month is usually 15 hours, then 2-3 hours monthly after that doing “reporting” with recommended improvements.
All the remaining hours are for link building/advertising time.
Congrats Jim on the continued and improving success. The samples you shared are great for conveying the hands on work that is being done. Once again, a dandy post!
On your Paid Backlinks report you have the column “Special backlinks”. What is an example or two of what you call a special backlink?
Do you ever send any link requests without an initial $ offer? Maybe where free links seem possible or available, or else wanting them to suggest a price first?
Thanks
Chris,
“special backlinks” are .edu’s or .gov’s
and yes, we don’t always pay, sometimes we get for free.
It’s obvious that you have some very good programmers over there to give you some great tools and reporting features. Thanks for sharing a glimpse of your client management, it really is eye opening.
With all of these reporting features though, have you ever run into any issues with the search engines disallowing your scraping for the info you need? Any advice on the best practices for this?
Thanks again
Jim,
I’m glad to hear your business is improving. It’s a great feeling isn’t it?
You must have clients in very lucrative verticals.
Keep fighting the good fight.
Congratulations. It’s always nice to work and work and work, and then have some recognize the value of your services.
It’s nice to read of people who work hard at something they enjoy and feel good with success…now, if I can get out of this agency (the day job) that has no clue to the opportunities of the Web…I envy you Jim!
I enjoy your blog – keep up the good work!
Thanks for sharing. I’m very excited for you, and excited for the industry in general. If your clients are smart enough to see the $$ value of optimisation that’s a really good sign for our industry. I’m slowly starting to see the trend pickup over here (in Oz) which is making it easier to convince clients to invest more in optimisation than PPC.
Congratulations Jim,
It is good to see someone do well with a business that they like!
So often we hear of the down side. Keep up with the great service and I am sure there will be no end in sight.
Mark
Congrats Jim and thanks a lot for sharing the data.
Well on the one hand, Jim, you are selling the hell out of your business. But it is your blog, and you provide lots of great tools and help to a lotta people…and it is your blog….LOL.
Congrats on the growth.
I used very transparent reporting for a consulting type business years ago. Gawd it worked very well. I was a commercial real estate broker representing user/buyers of buildings for their own businesses.
The thorough reporting ensured them that we were covering every base possible and that the decisions to be made were reasonable and best case alternatives. It removed the hocus pocus bs that sometimes went w/the business.
Its a great way to treat customers/clients.
Congrats on the growth.
Jim,
That was a real treat getting to see one of your sample reports. Just amazing. No wonder everybody loves you!!!
The value you provide to your clients is just astonishing.
No wonder they want to give you more money!!!
Congratulations,
Miriam
Congratulations Jim!
You doing things right with your transparent and honest reporting – especially when it comes to the time consuming link hunting as well as killing “myths of 1000 links for $19.90”
You deserve it!
cheers,
christoph
Nice post and yeah it’s always great to have .edu links.
I am happy to hear that things are going so well, of course it took time a lot of hard work and knowledge. Congrats. By the way I like the spam protection on the comments posting. What happens if the person can’t count? 🙂
Excellent sample reports, thanks for sharing and nice work with the client upgrades 😀
no comments. guys you are crazy!!!!!!!!!
Jim…congrats! I have had similar experiences lately. Not that working with new clients isn’t fun but getting them to understand the long term investment strategy of SEO is harder to do than working with current clients who want to invest more.
You folks do great work and deserve to reap what you sow!
Congratulations Jim.
Quick question though, how do the clients feel about part of their rankings being based on something that will disappear if they stop paying you? I assume that the paid links go away if the monthly fees do.
Hi Jim, certainly no surprises there. Examples and clarifications make all the difference.
Cheers!
Dave,
We explain to clients at the very start that:
1. our contract are monthly….they can stop anytime.
2. If they stop, our first question to them will be “Do you still want the monthly paid links?” If yes, then they pay just that total amount each month. If no, then they will know that those links will not be renewed when they come up again.
If they know up front they know up front and that’s definitely their decision to make.
Congrats again and best of luck in the future.
Wow I almost got that math question wrong ;P. j/k.
Nice work, Jim. This is testament to the fact that hand-built link building isn’t going anywhere. In fact, if we see this growing with all the money going into viral marketing as well, it’s a nice indicator that the industry on the whole is seeing some growth.
Looking forward to much more. Here’s to it.
and I’m really going to raz YOU in this year’s poker game – not some other dude named Jim coincidentally…
Now why does MY link get nofollowed Jim? Is it b/c i’m brown or what?!? sheesh…
Abhilash – all comment links are nofollowed for 2 days…just a program setting 😉
oh, and at poker – bring it on! I’m Feeling Lucky 😉
Very Nice to hear about the success you are having Jim.
SEO Companies like We Build pages are great at moving up the benchmark and trust of the industry so all the best and thanks.
Here in the East, I feel we have a bigger hurdle to convince clients of the benefits of SEO but persevere we must.
One question if you have the time though, we find that alot of sites only deal in annual or quarterly payments, do you fork out in advance for these based on your monthly model?
Thanks for sharing. The industry is very exciting. If your clients are smart enough to see the value of optimisation that’s a really good sign for our industry. I’m slowly starting to see the trend pickup over here (in Oz) which is making it easier to convince clients to invest more in optimisation than PPC.
Great work Jim, this is an industry I am extremely interested in and it seems you have been making great success. This is what you call a value added service great return in the long run, unfortunately i’m poor so I cant even fathom this service yet lol 🙂
Great post Jim. I hope you continue on updating this. Your website always keeps my interest.
Jim, I am a regular follower of your blog. Thanks for sharing the samples. Hope you continue to help your clients rank high in Search Engines.
Thanks
Thomson
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