Blog
What it costs, how long it takes
Nine pieces on marketing costs, realistic timelines and how this market prices its work. Every figure is cited, and nothing here describes a client we do not have.
What this blog is for
It answers the questions that come before a purchase: what marketing services cost, how long they take to work, and how to compare two suppliers describing the same job differently. Every statistic carries a source and a date.
What it costs, and how long it takes
The two questions every buyer asks first, answered with surveyed figures rather than ranges invented to sound reasonable.
How much does SEO cost?
SEO costs between roughly $500 and $5,000 a month for most small and mid-sized businesses, with $3,209 the average monthly retainer across 439 providers surveyed by Ahrefs (read 2026-09-06).
Updated 2026-08-18
How long does SEO take?
SEO takes 3 to 6 months to show ranking movement on competitive terms on an established site, and 6 to 12 months on a new domain.
Updated 2026-08-18
Marketing budget allocation for a small business
Advice on how much to spend on marketing ranges from 2% of revenue to 50% of it, and the sources rarely say which they are measuring.
Updated 2026-08-18
Doing it yourself
Practical work you can complete without hiring anyone, ordered by what typically moves something first.
SEO checklist for small business
Most small business SEO checklists are flat lists of 10 to 30 tasks, several of them years out of date.
Updated 2026-08-18
How to optimize Google Business Profile listings
How to optimize Google Business Profile visibility comes down to 4 things: an accurate primary category, complete and consistent business information, regular activity on the profile, and reviews answered rather than solicited.
Updated 2026-08-18
How to get cited by ChatGPT
You cannot make ChatGPT cite you, and Ethan Smith of Graphite reports that only about 35% of ChatGPT citations overlap with Google’s organic results.
Updated 2026-08-18
Buying it well
How this market prices, what the models trade off against each other, and how to tell when a retainer has stopped working.
What is a productized service?
A productized service is a service sold like a product: fixed deliverables, a repeatable process, and a published price, which on this site starts at $300/mo.
Updated 2026-08-18
Signs your marketing agency is coasting
Most people fire a marketing agency long after the evidence arrived, because the evidence is boring.
Updated 2026-08-18
Safe link building: what to buy and what to avoid
White hat link building means earning links through methods that comply with search engine guidelines, and every published tactic list for it is unpaid.
Updated 2026-08-18
What you will not find here
- Case studies, because there are no clients yet to write about
- Statistics without a source and a date
- Predictions dressed as analysis
- Posts published weekly for the sake of a schedule
Nine posts is deliberately few. Each exists because a specific question kept coming up, usually one that the price page answers only in part, and each gets updated rather than replaced.
Write for this blog
Outside contributors are welcome, and the terms are published: the contributor guidelines cover accepted topics, the 1,500 word floor, the five checks an editor runs, and a reply within three business days.
Advertising is a separate conversation and lives on its own page, because a paid placement never buys an editorial slot.
The prices these posts keep referring to
Eight services, published tiers, counted deliverables, printed exclusions. The pricing page carries all of them side by side.
Entry point $300/mo. Cancel any time. No long contracts.
Still deciding?
Read how the process runs end to end: order, brief, production, delivery, report.
How it works