He sells content for $2k a month. Why does this work?

boatBurner

boatBurner

shutup, crime!
Feb 24, 2012
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I sat through yet another internet marketer's presentation this afternoon, and I came to the same two conclusions that have plagued me for the last 6 months: 1.) I'm doing it wrong or 2.) They're not making any money.

Our guy today has a couple of packages. At $2,000 / month, you're getting 30 "industry authority" articles, a few social media network setups and (not mentioned in the material) a HootSuite setup. Oh, and a web site.

From there, it goes up to $5k and $10k, with the primary differences being in the number of articles (per year) and I think the latter two packages include Google Authorship.

How is this selling (apparently) so well?

When I first got out here and made the rounds offline, it became immediately clear that while I have a lot of developer competition among my online circles, the quality of talent getting in front of business owners offline is significantly lesser.

When we sell SEO packages, we have a certain process that we implement much like everyone else, but it's significantly more detailed than a simple content strategy (and not to downplay content, but we just take into account a lot of other tactics and have a friendly way of differentiating them between packages).

I had a chance to talk to him afterwards, and asked a few subtle questions, just to gauge how much effort was really put into their plans. I didn't get any new impressions other than he's mostly a white knight.

My experience in internet marketing is limited to local lead gen, but this green horn is baffled by these unimpressive marketing packages that seem to sell so well.

For those in client work, what has your experience been with pricing and packages?
 


I've come to think of marketing online vs offline just like online vs offline poker. Online is always harder because of all of the internet nerds (and foreigners) willing to work for less money in exchange for not having to go outside. When you move offline, you can't grunt and point at people, and in return, you can demand higher prices.
 
Pretty reasonable for the website + content + social media (aka my own personal hell)

Will it get you ranked? That better be some damn good content. lol Assuming they are going to promote the content and not just pray that it will be randomly picked up a la Randy Fishface.

Sounds fairly wishy washy to me. But that's the new trend. Hippy marketing, it's all about "feelings" and being social in a fake way with people you've never met. /rant

Anyways if you can sell that shit then sell that shit. Can't hate. It's easier to make a sale in person any day of the week. (unless you are fugly) :D
 
vgeek said:
I've come to think of marketing online vs offline just like online vs offline poker. Online is always harder because of all of the internet nerds (and foreigners) willing to work for less money in exchange for not having to go outside. When you move offline, you can't grunt and point at people, and in return, you can demand higher prices.
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And to clarify, it's not that I think his prices are too high for internet marketing services, I'm just stumped that the number of benefits offered in each package are so relatively few and in turn, the margins seem astronomical.

Dumbing down the details and keeping it simple is fine. But really? You can get away with this much?
 
You have to remember the audience. If he is pitching this offline, the user probably hasn't done as much research as someone comparing SEO services sitting behind a computer. It also depends on the industry you are serving. I'm not sure about the presentation that you saw, but if you can SHOW the value that you bring, such as improving rankings by 10 spots, which in turn increases traffic by 25%, and revenue by $X, then it becomes relatively easy to say, pay me this.
 
It's all about positioning and knowing what the market will bear. The biggest problem most people face when having to sell their product/service, is FEAR and TIME and COMPETITION. They are deathly afraid to ask for the buyers commitment, so they often avoid it or incorrectly assume that they have to drop their price drastically to convince the person to buy. And the second issue people face is TIME, i.e. (they focus too much time trying to convince the wrong customers to purchase or are afraid of all the time wasted if they can't convince the buyer to purchase their service). And finally competition, if you are competing online against 10143 other firms all the pretty much do the same thing, they you are left to compete on PRICE and PRICE alone.

In short to answer your question - Why your colleague is able to charge 500 -1000% more then what other people are charging. It's because he positioned himself as an expert in the market, identified a need that the client had and was able to convince the client it was in their best interest to retain his services. If they balked at his price, instead of immediately dropping his price in half, he explained the difference between what he was providing vs the other companies out there, that might charge less, but you are not going to get the individual support and the articles won't be stylistically and grammatically correct.
 
Because people have no idea how much what it takes to do or the cost involved. They have no starting point so they think that's their way to an online business and pay the price.
 
SHGDigitalMedia said:
Because people have no idea how much what it takes to do or the cost involved. They have no starting point so they think that's their way to an online business and pay the price.
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I understand these points. What I'm confused about is how are people providing this quality of service not seeing a high turnover and low referral rate?
 
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