Pricing Your Services

But what do you charge a celebrity for your services? If you’re not sure about this part, you’re not alone. Many new social media managers under price themselves as a result – and you don’t want to do that.

Ideally, you will price your services at an hourly rate. Some feel that $25 an hour is reasonable to start out, but as the celebrity gets more popular and the campaigns get more successful, it’s not unreasonable to charge $100 an hour.

Think about all of the tasks that you will be doing and list them out for the celebrity, along with the estimated times per day you will do each one. These tasks might include:

Communication
Emails, message boards, etc.
Consulting
Direct communication with celebrity.
Social media
Tweets, posts, link sharing, etc.
Blogs
Creating blog posts, sending out links, responding to comments.
Videos and Music
Creating the downloads, then uploading them to the sites.
Reputation management
Watching for things that need to be controlled online, i.e. rumors, fiascos, missteps, etc.
Spam Management
Getting rid of spam messages and other spam content.

As you can see, there are a number of tasks you will do which can add up to thousands of dollars, if not more, in wages for your celebrity. They are getting a lot for the money they are paying.

Here are some ideas as to what you might charge:

$250 for a consultation to see what the celebrity wants.

$150 to setup the networks and $500 for management of one network.

It makes sense to charge more if you have more networks to manage since it will take more time and it will cause you to work harder to manage them all at the same time.

It makes sense to create a tiered system:

1 network: Setup fee + monthly management fee.

2 – 3 networks: Setup fee + doubled fee for monthly management

The more networks you manage and the more updates the celebrity wants on a daily basis, the more you should charge.

This will allow you to weed out people who aren’t able to pay the money, and it will add value to your services since you do charge a premium rate.

Don’t be surprised if you have only a few clients at first, slowly as your work gets results, you will begin to see more networks being added to your daily schedule.

Getting Paid!

To invoice clients, it’s a good idea to establish this system right from the start.

Paying via PayPal or check are the most popular ways to manage money, but you might opt for another payment system if it works better for you.

You should setup a simple contract at the beginning of your services, outlining what you will do, when you will do it, and when you expect to be paid.

For example, you might state that you will be paid on the 1st of the month for the previous month’s services.

It will be clear from the start that this is the arrangement. Have you and the celebrity sign this, or a representative for the celebrity.

You will then have the document in hand should anything go wrong in the future. You should have a copy and the celebrity should have a copy.

Now you know everything you need to know to get started working for the stars!