Approaches to creating customer satisfaction
There is hardly anything in the world that can not be made a little worse and sold a little cheaper -- and the people who consider price alone are this man's lawful prey.
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I mention that 19th century quote from John Ruskin, to point out that if you did use any or all of those points above, it will be no time before someone offers a cheaper price. When that happens, do you lower your prices to compete?
If what you are trying to do is find a fair pricing system, then define fair.
What I'm suggesting is that to look for a pricing model using anything but your own objectives is a mistake. I'm suggesting that the price has little to do with all of those things above. The price should have to do with what you are offering. What you are offering again, boils down to
1. Objective
What do I want in what time frame?
(possible example -- a million dollars in a year)
2. Strategy
How am I going to get that in that timeframe?
(possible example --- selling links)
3. Cost
How much will I have to invest to accomplish this?
(possible example--- how much will I have to spend to MAKE a million dollars?)
NOW, you can come up with a price.
After I developed an objective and strategy, we did some cash flow studies using about 6 possible scenarios. We used them to come up with a projected P&L and THAT is what determined our basic pricing.
For example, part of our strategy was to build a huge inventory database quickly, (it was a little more detailed than that but this is for illustration purposes only), so in our cost analysis, we figured a high pay out. Naturally that affected our pricing. To me, that makes a lot more sense than trying to base price on something we did not control. I can tell you this, time and labor are going to be two of the largest determining factors in whether you make a profit or not.
Once we established a basic price list, that enabled us to form policies enabling us to perform as brokers. In other words, I don't try to determine the perception of value for a client. I only try to satisy a desire. If a client tells us they want something specific, like a fast loading page for example, we simply calculate what we feel will cover our cost in locating, securing and providing that additional service. The more difficult the request, the more time it takes to deliver and the more it costs.
To me, if you believe high traffic is important enough to justify paying my people to find the page, the PR AND the traffic levels, fine. We don't question your perception of value, we accept that our job is to meet our own objectives by satisfying the client within the guidelines and general policies as established in our strategic planning.
With one of our initial objectives and strategies being to grow a large database by paying inventory partners more, we put ourselves into a postion of being able to satisfy those special desires quickly and cost effectively. That means that as the new link gold rush gets into full swing and we all start seeing every kind of cheap link scam imagineable, I'm not put into a position of having to continually lower my prices trying to chase the next cheapest competitor. Our business plan for this particular service never involved being the cheapest.
I'm trying to answer your question as honestly as I can. I truly believe that trying to find some criteria to price links that does not take a defintion of the service you intend to offer and a viable business plan into consideration is a mistake. Selling links is not that different than selling any other type of promotional service. There are a lot of people wanting a lot of links for a lot of reasons. Trying to find out what a link is worth is the wrong approach. Trying to find out what YOUR service is worth makes a lot more sense to me.
I'll give you one more little tip from the voice of experience. The trick to success is in getting your client to tell you what it is they REALLY want. Most of our clients say they want a link from a PR 7,8 or whatever. Think about it. Is a link what you REALLY want or is what you REALLY want to be on top of Google results?
Some people really want the traffic. Some really want the increased page rank. Some really want to be on top of Google and some just want to get rich quick. I can provide links for any of those desires, but I have to know what it is you are really wanting to buy to be able to satisfy you and be able to provide true value for my services.
Most of the problems with this industry, (much like most of the problems with the entire SEO industry), comes from providing the right service for the wrong objective. Find out what your client really wants, make sure they understand the risks, rewards and costs of what they are buying and then deliver that.
This is another reason that I'm suggesting you establish your objective and strategy first. I believe there will soon be services that specialize in links on high traffic sites. Those prices will be based on the cost of THAT service. There will be services that specalize in links from authorities. Those prices would be based on the cost of THAT service. You see what I mean. The pricing is going to be driven by the market and the market is going to be driven by perception of value and no matter which criteria you would use, that would not work for anyone other than the person who that would work for.
Set an objective. Define a target market. Develop a strategy and do some income projections. Develop a business plan, set your numbers and then do it. If you don't hit your numbers, re-examine your strategy, adjust your number and do it again.
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