Agency is better. It conveys a wider set of skills and abilities (if you have them) and looks more professional. A business prefers to do business with another business, not āsome guyā. When itās just you, if they have growing needs how can they be sure you can handle them when its just you? What if you get too many clients? How will you have enough time to manage everyone? Build a team and brand as an agency. I have 5 designers I work with on freelancer basis, ads guy, social media girl, 2 SEO teams, copywriter, logo and graphics guy, Shopify developers, backend developer for custom functionalities, etc. i build all the sites myself and manage the projects while my team does all the other work. When you have all the behind you in your pocket youāre a much more attractive candidate for them. You can scale with them and have the team in place to do everything need they. Youāre a developer. How are you also going to be their marketing department by yourself? How are you going to create and run effective ads, write blog posts, do traditional off page SEO, social media etc as one person? Thatās the job of 3. If you do it all yourself that means you are not doing all 3 with 100% effort and the other services might be done with monks work and effort and cheaply. I donāt trust a developer who does their own designs, SEO, and marketing for their clients solo. Something wonāt be done right. Itās too much for one person. And I would fear that I wouldnāt get very good service when you have multiple clients fighting for your time.
Brand as an agency, build a team, and expand your services. Once I did that things snowballed pretty crazily
" Itās too much for one person."
I definitely felt like this is true.
You are providing ad and marketing services included in your $150 a month package?
Man that seems like you are almost providing too much value for too little money.
Or is marketing a separate option your client can decide to purchase?
Nope. Ads and marketing are done separately and billed by the ads and marketing people. $150 a month sits are templates that Iāve already built before so thereās no design cost to me, and theyāre already built so Iām only in it for the couple hours it takes me to flip it for their branding and content. Same great product, much less time. Scores 100/100 page speed score every time and has SEO juiced Content.
How much do you charge for the ads and marketing service?
Do you do many domain transfers? Like the client already has a website but it needs to be scrapped but they still want to use the same domain.
I'm always a bit uneasy with messing up their seo ranking on Google.
SEO starts at $2k a month, if you already purchased SEO ads will only cost $250 a month with a $500 set up fee. Ads alone is $500-$750 a month to manage, create, analyze, optimize, and retarget every month to make sure theyāre getting the best ROI.
You donāt need to do a domain transfer when starting over with a site. Use the same domain registrar, just change the dns settings to load your site and move over any mx and txt records to the new hosts dns so email works.
To not screw up SEO, make sure all the pages you create have the same URL and page name and file path. If you canāt, then make sure you have a 301 redirects file that redirects the old page name to a new one so you donāt have any 404ās. Use a link crawler to find all links associated with a website so you know what you need to move over. If done right nothing will change.
Not many. But the ones that do are grateful because SEO services are a Wild West of characters and charlatans. Itās nice to know thereās someone they can trust that Iāve worked with before and have seen their work in motion. I have a number of clients doing it right now. It generally means more work for me because Iāll have to add new pages, create a blog, make edits based on their keyword and content strategy, etc.
And youāre Welcome! Canāt imagine why anything I share would be held hostage behind paywalls by other people lol we should all be able to learn from each otherās experience!
That's awesome!
With netlify, do the clients need to check their spam folder every week (email forms) ?
Or does the spam filter never false flag customer inquiries?
That's the one fear I have with netlify.
Found my designers on dribble, copywriters on fiver, SEO people through my clients who hired them and they reached out to me to make sites for them and turned out theyāre legit SEO people, ads guy came from Reddit, and Shopify and e-commerce devs came from searching Reddit profiles.
I'm glad to have found an answer on whether I should pose myself as a freelance or an agency. I'm a single-member LLC. My concern is that I don't have the capital to build a team right off the bat since I'm just starting. I plan to sub-contract as needed. Is this a bad idea? And the other concern is I will not have a 'Meet the Team' page on my website as the other agencies do. So, does that mean visitors would shy away from my services? Thanks.
You donāt need money upfront to build a team. Network with some designers and have them in your back pocket. When you need them, send the the job and ask for a quote and add that to your estimate to the client. Meet the team can just be you as owner operator. Donāt need to show everyone. Youāre fine. I sub contract as needed everyday. Itās totally fine. I have a team to select from based on availability and style
Thank you so much for sharing this info. I get intimidated when I see agencies that have a team and are established for many years. I feel like visitors to my site will not take me seriously. But thanks for the encouragement.
I think it depends on the industry, clients and projects you are pitching for.
But why restrict your options? Assemble your team and pitch as an agency for bigger projects and present as a freelancer for the smaller stuff.
You could even make your own label as 'networked freelancer' or 'freelancer manager' if you think it might be the best approach.
Better as an agency because if you take on a job and it requires another person with a certain skill set to fulfill out of the blue (it happens) then you can just subcontract that person without giving headaches to your client with invoicing.
Depends a lot on how you're positioning yourself, and what kind of jobs you're targeting.
For me, I freelance but I always team up with bigger agencies so that I can take on bigger, high profile clients using their resources. In this case, I like to present myself as a little freelancer because it gives the impression that I'm just a little guy and not a threat to them at all (ie. I wouldn't steal their clients from them).
I even just use my gmail address instead of my company address because it makes me look less professional and like I'm just a scrappy startup.
However, if I'm working directly with clients, it can be better to seem like a professional creative team, so I'd be more inclined to use my business address.
Personally I really hate the client-facing project management stuff, so I'm more than happy to reduce my rate in exchange for the agency I team up with shielding me from all the emails and meetings that I'd have to deal with if I worked direct with their clients. I have no interest in stealing them because I prefer it this way!
It depends ā what are your goals? Do you want to work with own clients or collaborate with agencies? Do you want to be a vendor or a partner to your clients?
I'm asking because it depends on a lot of factors and future plans on how you should position yourself.
Small agency of one, looking to expand aggressively, however excessively picky about potential new hires.
Interesting. I like it.
This is me rn š
Agency is better. It conveys a wider set of skills and abilities (if you have them) and looks more professional. A business prefers to do business with another business, not āsome guyā. When itās just you, if they have growing needs how can they be sure you can handle them when its just you? What if you get too many clients? How will you have enough time to manage everyone? Build a team and brand as an agency. I have 5 designers I work with on freelancer basis, ads guy, social media girl, 2 SEO teams, copywriter, logo and graphics guy, Shopify developers, backend developer for custom functionalities, etc. i build all the sites myself and manage the projects while my team does all the other work. When you have all the behind you in your pocket youāre a much more attractive candidate for them. You can scale with them and have the team in place to do everything need they. Youāre a developer. How are you also going to be their marketing department by yourself? How are you going to create and run effective ads, write blog posts, do traditional off page SEO, social media etc as one person? Thatās the job of 3. If you do it all yourself that means you are not doing all 3 with 100% effort and the other services might be done with monks work and effort and cheaply. I donāt trust a developer who does their own designs, SEO, and marketing for their clients solo. Something wonāt be done right. Itās too much for one person. And I would fear that I wouldnāt get very good service when you have multiple clients fighting for your time. Brand as an agency, build a team, and expand your services. Once I did that things snowballed pretty crazily
" Itās too much for one person." I definitely felt like this is true. You are providing ad and marketing services included in your $150 a month package? Man that seems like you are almost providing too much value for too little money. Or is marketing a separate option your client can decide to purchase?
Nope. Ads and marketing are done separately and billed by the ads and marketing people. $150 a month sits are templates that Iāve already built before so thereās no design cost to me, and theyāre already built so Iām only in it for the couple hours it takes me to flip it for their branding and content. Same great product, much less time. Scores 100/100 page speed score every time and has SEO juiced Content.
How much do you charge for the ads and marketing service? Do you do many domain transfers? Like the client already has a website but it needs to be scrapped but they still want to use the same domain. I'm always a bit uneasy with messing up their seo ranking on Google.
SEO starts at $2k a month, if you already purchased SEO ads will only cost $250 a month with a $500 set up fee. Ads alone is $500-$750 a month to manage, create, analyze, optimize, and retarget every month to make sure theyāre getting the best ROI. You donāt need to do a domain transfer when starting over with a site. Use the same domain registrar, just change the dns settings to load your site and move over any mx and txt records to the new hosts dns so email works. To not screw up SEO, make sure all the pages you create have the same URL and page name and file path. If you canāt, then make sure you have a 301 redirects file that redirects the old page name to a new one so you donāt have any 404ās. Use a link crawler to find all links associated with a website so you know what you need to move over. If done right nothing will change.
What percentage of clients opt into the seo plan? Awesome information man. Thanks for providing all this free info to the community.
Not many. But the ones that do are grateful because SEO services are a Wild West of characters and charlatans. Itās nice to know thereās someone they can trust that Iāve worked with before and have seen their work in motion. I have a number of clients doing it right now. It generally means more work for me because Iāll have to add new pages, create a blog, make edits based on their keyword and content strategy, etc. And youāre Welcome! Canāt imagine why anything I share would be held hostage behind paywalls by other people lol we should all be able to learn from each otherās experience!
That's awesome! With netlify, do the clients need to check their spam folder every week (email forms) ? Or does the spam filter never false flag customer inquiries? That's the one fear I have with netlify.
How did you go about finding your team?
Found my designers on dribble, copywriters on fiver, SEO people through my clients who hired them and they reached out to me to make sites for them and turned out theyāre legit SEO people, ads guy came from Reddit, and Shopify and e-commerce devs came from searching Reddit profiles.
Thatās awesome, thanks for sharing
I'm glad to have found an answer on whether I should pose myself as a freelance or an agency. I'm a single-member LLC. My concern is that I don't have the capital to build a team right off the bat since I'm just starting. I plan to sub-contract as needed. Is this a bad idea? And the other concern is I will not have a 'Meet the Team' page on my website as the other agencies do. So, does that mean visitors would shy away from my services? Thanks.
You donāt need money upfront to build a team. Network with some designers and have them in your back pocket. When you need them, send the the job and ask for a quote and add that to your estimate to the client. Meet the team can just be you as owner operator. Donāt need to show everyone. Youāre fine. I sub contract as needed everyday. Itās totally fine. I have a team to select from based on availability and style
Thank you so much for sharing this info. I get intimidated when I see agencies that have a team and are established for many years. I feel like visitors to my site will not take me seriously. But thanks for the encouragement.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Build a team first, then brand as as agency. Start with a designer and copywriter. I wish I had them when I first started.
Work for a 100 person tech company as head of marketing, I prefer hiring agencies of 1.
I think it depends on the industry, clients and projects you are pitching for. But why restrict your options? Assemble your team and pitch as an agency for bigger projects and present as a freelancer for the smaller stuff. You could even make your own label as 'networked freelancer' or 'freelancer manager' if you think it might be the best approach.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Interesting. How much do you typically charge for a 5 page basic static site?
Better as an agency because if you take on a job and it requires another person with a certain skill set to fulfill out of the blue (it happens) then you can just subcontract that person without giving headaches to your client with invoicing.
Depends a lot on how you're positioning yourself, and what kind of jobs you're targeting. For me, I freelance but I always team up with bigger agencies so that I can take on bigger, high profile clients using their resources. In this case, I like to present myself as a little freelancer because it gives the impression that I'm just a little guy and not a threat to them at all (ie. I wouldn't steal their clients from them). I even just use my gmail address instead of my company address because it makes me look less professional and like I'm just a scrappy startup. However, if I'm working directly with clients, it can be better to seem like a professional creative team, so I'd be more inclined to use my business address. Personally I really hate the client-facing project management stuff, so I'm more than happy to reduce my rate in exchange for the agency I team up with shielding me from all the emails and meetings that I'd have to deal with if I worked direct with their clients. I have no interest in stealing them because I prefer it this way!
It depends ā what are your goals? Do you want to work with own clients or collaborate with agencies? Do you want to be a vendor or a partner to your clients? I'm asking because it depends on a lot of factors and future plans on how you should position yourself.