I have a client who has offered me a percent of all new sales driven to his site via my seo ( well limited seo skills ). He would pay me for every sale except for repeat customer or existing customers. how can I track my sales with this method, I thought about using affiliate links but I wanted to push the client main own website and not an affiliate site. Currently they avg about 4k in sales per month with 80% profit margin. So at 20% I can make about $800 monthly to continually market his site and get him high in the serp. Currently most sales come from overture ppc.
I've never liked this payment method. The site owner seems to hold all the cards. Do you monitor the stats? Do you have a way to track soemone coming in from a SE all the way to purchase? I'm interested in what others have done in this area. I always get soem money up front and then charge a flat monthly fee.
As unknownseo mentioned, you will have no means to justify any claim for royalties. The arrangement will work only as long as the client is honest and forthright. Better never p*ss him off if you go this route. A better arrangement might be to work out a (lower) percentage ownership of the business - safer for you if you are legally a business partner IMO.
some people use a the merchant account to track stuff like this personally I would be very leary of working on domain I don't own without payment. You Could create a couple sites and optimize them for his key phrases and then moniter the traffic on your own sites, you could also hot link into his shopping cart from your sites. That way you would be covered if anything got disagreeable.
simple answer: don't work this way. If he can't afford you right now, he will not pay you when he can afford you (After you did your seo-thingy). SEO is long term investment, you work hard and at the end of the day (year most likely) your client will earn more money and you are still looking for a new SEO-job. Just send your client a descent offer, tell him what you're gonna do for him/his site, how long it will take, that you can't guarantee anything and show him some recent work. Worked for me, hope it does for you too. If you do good, your client will be back for more.
I agree. Never agree to this payment method. If his site converts so well, why doesn't he just pay you up front for your services.
This is certainly a risky way to do business. Unless you have a way to literally verify what they tell you (in terms of sales), don't do it. I would advise against it. A better way to do business is to set verifiable milestones, and agree to fees payable upon reaching same. Common sense as always. Don't take risks unless you have to. Cheers, JL
thanks for all the reply, I currently Host and maintain the site, this client is very honest but money can change people. I'll seek an alternate payment method