Do you want to price your social media services the right way? Who doesn’t?
However, there are many factors that will determine if your clients will accept the rates that you’re going to be asking for or not.
I know that many starters struggle to find jobs, and when they do, they don’t find a way to get their clients to pay them what their skills are really worth.
If you’re in this particular situation, then here are some tips to help you get paid the big bucks for your same social media services.
Build a good work history first
Most clients don’t really care about what you say you can do for their businesses. What they care about rather is what you’ve done for previous businesses.
All the clients who I’ve dealt with have the mentality of “what you see is what you get”, so you better show them good proof of your previous work.
I’ve seen many social media consultants who charge an insane amount of money just doing the work that many of you can do. These folks have managed to get there by making a huge difference in their previous client’s businesses.
I know that you’re probably overwhelmed by the competition out there, but believe me when I say that you’re going to bypass 80% of that competition if you build a good work history.
In order for you to build a good work history, you really need to think long term. It’s better to charge less for now so you can charge a lot in the future than to price yourself the right way now, and end up with no clients or work history.
Do more work than what you’ve been paid for
This might seem a little bit counter intuitive to you, but let me explain.
In order for you to build a good reputation as a social media service provider, you definitely need to “WOW” your clients. Most clients do research prior to hiring, so they approximately know what people/agencies charge for various social media services.
However, if you do more work for the same amount of money that your competition is charging, then your clients are going to start taking you very seriously.
As you may already know, a very large portion of people get hired through referrals. According to my humble experience, I believe that referrals are your best friend when it comes to getting new clients.
Once you have few happy clients, then you’ll never have to worry about getting clients ever again.
Start a blog
In order to showcase your expertise to your potential high paying clients, you need to have a central hub where you give valuable social media advice.
Many people would disagree with me on this, but this has been proven again and again to land you the best clients that you can ever have. Starting a blog isn’t actually a hard thing to do.
You can either hire someone else to do it for you, or just do it yourself following one of the gazillion of articles and videos posted about this subject on the web.
Also, keep an eye on Jane’s “Create Killer Content For Your Blog” series if you really want to take advantage of blogging.
Ask your clients to leave honest feedback
One of the great ways to showing your successful work history is by asking your previous clients to leave you an honest feedback about how you helped their businesses. It’s better to have a particular page on your website/blog that is meant only for your client’s testimonials.
To make this page convert better in terms of getting new clients, you need to include a picture, name and a website/Facebook page/Twitter profile of your client (but you need to ask for their permission first).
Tip: A good way to get your client’s feedback in your testimonials page is to offer them a discount on the services that you provide them if they leave an insightful and honest feedback on your website.
Don’t hang around low quality clients
Most clients don’t really understand how social media works or how it’s going to benefit their businesses. I see clients posting unrealistic tasks for a ridiculous amount of money like “I need 10.000 Facebook fans in 24 hours for 50 bucks!”.
Your job isn’t actually educating those clients and showing them that they can only get 10.000 hollow (fake) accounts in that time frame and with that amount of money, because these clients aren’t serious enough about investing money to grow their businesses.
What I advise you to do is to stay away from these clients and stick only with the ones who are serious enough to invest whatever it takes to growing their businesses.
That being said, I’m not really a fan of getting paid less than what my skills are actually worth, but if it’s a part of a larger plan as I mentioned before, then there is no problem in doing that.
Once you establish yourself in the social media service providing market, then you could probably charge those amounts of money that we all dream of.
Houssem is a social media manager and consultant. He helps small businesses make sense of their social media marketing strategy. Make sure you get his free Social Media Manager Handbook.
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Networking is a great tool to get your name out there.
That way, you can see who is a quality client or not. And to show your work, create your blog in order to be seen by others your work.
Great article
Networking is definitely a major ingredient in every client getting process. In a matter of fact, social media now plays a major role in hiring, and i’m not only talking about LinkedIn. Thanks for stopping by Samuel. Good luck.
Houssem
Hello Houssem. I’ve actually made social media a major part of my business pitch to corporate clients. And they buy! What you said about price is true. I have found the corporates don’t mind paying the rates, your experience and portfolio depends on the length of the contract they sign to you.
Houssem very nicely written article. Now a days in my personal view building community around your website is very important. You are very right in saying that first built good work history.
Hi Zeeshan,
I believe that a good work history speaks for itself. It builds instant credibility so you don’t have to convince any client to hire you. Once you have a successful work history, you’ll be turning your phone off because of all the clients who will be competing for your valuable services. Thanks for the nice words, i really hope i helped. Good luck.
Houssem
i have been pretty much successful with arbitrage method , buy cheap social media services and sell for expensive , its making me great $150 per week by doing nothing lol
You’re absolutely right Saad. Some resellers make a full time income doing basically nothing but getting high paying clients and sell them cheap services that they’ve already outsourced. However, there are a few of them that provide their clients with low quality packages (Fake Facebook likes and Twitter followers). This practice will probably make them money on the short run but it will never build them a good reputation, not to mention that it’s unethical. Good luck with your reselling Saad, i really hope i helped!
Houssem
Wow, 150 bucks in a week is a great deal of money. Saad, I am interested to know how you work with that plugin to get so much success.
Kristine Johnson says
Making money needs hard work and high quality of work, especially online. Blogging is one of the finest way to generate profit out of hard work through words but of course, it has to be unique and informative. If you find yourself getting what your goals are, gained credibility from readers, subscriptions, followers etc. It’s time to charge for your social media service, because you have the guts to compete with other experts in this area.
That’s nice points or we can say tricks, to show your value to clients and charge them higher for same work.
I agree that most of people do proper research before hiring anyone to perform their work, so it’s your responsibility to do their work diligently and impress them.
You make a very good point Aasma. Going beyond your client’s expectation is definitely going to make them stick with you longer. The other great thing is that you’re going to be getting referrals from happy clients whom you’ve done a great job growing their businesses. Thanks for stopping by!
Houssem
Pratt says
Definitely some great tips here. I think that “don’t hang around low quality clients” is really key - those types of people suck all your time and have no money to spend on your services. They want to pick your brain for free and not pay anything for your time. Thanks again!
Hi Pratt, I believe that serious social media service providers should only invest their time in growing their service providing business. It’s true that you may get a quick buck from those low paying clients, but if you invest that time spent into growing your business or even learning industry best practices, the return will be much higher. Thanks for your insightful comment!
Houssem
Social media is of high competition nowadays and every marketers find ways on how they will compete to the moving market. They look on easy ways and effective ways to increase rankings.
I like the new plugin from what I have seem. I still use the free version on my sites but have noticed the pro version on a number of other sites.
Wow that is amazing! I don’t know how you do it but I am sure it will take some time and skill before I can learn how to use it to earn more money! Thanks for the post!
Nice points jane social media play vital role.
Thanks
These are really very great tips. These tips will help me much to earn more money through my social media service. So, these are very important to me. Thanks for these valuable tips.
Good article Houssem,
I don’t know the right answers for getting more clients but I do know that it is really important to make your current clients happy. By ‘overdelivering’ as the saying goes, you will have a good chance of getting a good reference from them.
I know that when I outsource and I get mediocre work, I won’t use that person again. Much less, would I ever be likely to recommend them to someone else.
One outsourcer that did very poor work for me contacted me recently about sponsoring her to do some non-profit work. I was very surprised that she thought I would help her.
I thought of her as a bit dishonest before, there is no way I would invest in her non-profit career. But she somehow thought I would.
Or, perhaps she felt that she had nothing to lose by asking.
I think that if we want clients to respect us, we need to product respectable work - and that means doing more than we were paid for as you suggested.
Hi David, I believe that overdelivering is the only way to get ahead of your competitions. Because most clients do their home work prior hiring, you’ll have a great chance getting the contract if you add more value to your packages for the same price your competition is charging. Your clients will notice that and hire you immediately.
In the case of your outsourcer, I believe that some people don’t even realize that their services are of low quality. I deal with some of them from time to time and I always get some that I can’t convince that their work is of low quality. I guess that they just don’t know what quality work is! Thanks for sharing your experience David, i appreciate it!
Houssem
I Love your points ” Show your history” and start your own blog. “Blog can establish yourself as an authority and history can show your results.
rakesh kumar recently posted..Easiest Method to find out profitable Niche sites
I feel the point regarding “building a good work history” is really useful as many clients really do great research before hiring.
Moreover doing more work then what one is paid for is always a great help for a newly started work and for dealing with the competitors too….