By the way, you need to tell the client straight up that SEO isn;t something that will be done overnight so I think you will need the client to commit for at least x months. From my experience I usually tell my clients that they will not see any results until the first 6-9 months, I also include a 'break out' clause if they want to terminate the agreement (very rarely this happens). I agree with Snowbird, SEO takes some serious amount of time and for example purchasing good quality links don't come easy. If the client is going to get scared off then is it worth you taking this client on in the first place???? I often find that the clients that pay the least are the clients that always complain the most too...lol Best of luck.
I have some pricing options listed on my site: http://www.ranksurge.com/optimization-prices.cfm send me a message if you need any elaboration.
Some competitive keywords and phrase can take even longer than that, it's not unheard of to wait months to see results.
I don't think it is realistic to tell a client they won't see any results for 6-9 months. They may not make number #1 or even the first page with a competitive keyword in that time but they should see some results...increased backlinks, ranking for less competitive keywords, moving up the ranks, better content or whatever else you are doing to help them.
I dont believe in One Time Fees. I guess there should be an ongoing contract and the amount fixed according to the work.
Thanks for all the advice and input. It seems like about 90-95% of my potential clients (my hosting customers and others who have replied back to an SEO sales pitch) know nothing to very little about SEO. The majority of them spend like $7.99/month on hosting and are not about to spend thousands or even hundreds of dollars on SEO services. And it makes no sense to me to put in hours upon hours of time building links etc. for chump change. So it seems like the only logical alternative would be to offer both a "one time" package and some ongoing monthly package. It seems like services can logically be divided up between link-building, which has to be an ongoing long term recurring item and everything that comes before that, i.e. keyword selection, site and competition analysis and on-page optimization. So maybe it makes sense to figure out an hourly rate for link building (say $25 per hour for instance) and offer to do that on a monthly basis, with the number of hours per month dependent on the difficulty of the job, but also to offer a one time package that would include keyword analysis, competition analysis for those keywords plus an on-page optimization report that would include whatever changes I'd recommend (titles, meta tags, h1 tags etc.) Maybe I'd charge $50-100 for that. I can do the on-page optimization changes myself at the $25 per hour fee or the customer can do it. The goal of the one time package would be to get the customer up to the point where they could then do the link building themselves or hire someone (or me) to do it. I'm trying to be able to offer something of value in a one time package for those that aren't ready or willing to make a financial commitment to a long term monthly link-building service. What do you think of this approach?
in my opinion, SEO should charge on how many days can they rank the site and lace it in top page no matter how many backlinks or promotion he does