How to Price Your Services as a Social Media Freelancer

Social media marketing pricing can seem tricky and full of nuances. Here are some specific tips on how to price your services as a social media freelancer.
Your magic number
Figure out a specific amount of money per month that you would like to earn from each client. Know how much you would like to work or how many clients you would like to have, and calculate backward.
For example, if you want to make $100k a year, with five clients you need to bring in an average of $20,000 per client, or about $1,700 per month, per client. Having SMART goals will help you put your full compensation terms together for each client.
From here, there are some market guidelines on social media marketing pricing, but the rest is up to fine tuning your deal making skills.
Pricing guidelines: Funnels and Facebook Ads
If you’re going to run Facebook Ads for your clients, they’re going to need a sales funnel. Charge no less than $2,500 to build out a sales funnel. Setting up a funnel includes building out all the pages with easy to use usability, mobile optimization, integrating with their email auto-responder (possibly programing the emails too), consultation on copywriting and graphics, and added the Facebook and Google Analytics pixels to all pages in their funnel.
If you’re new to Sales Funnels, check out this video to expand your knowledge.
$2500 is a very reasonable rate for this service, as it will take you a significant amount of time to set up a custom funnel. With more experience and proof of your funnel’s ROI, you have room to increase this rate big time.
Managing Facebook Ads campaigns effectively takes time and expertise, so charge a minimum of $1,000 per month. Facebook campaign management includes researching target audiences, creating multiple ad variations per audience, tracking, scheduling, and reporting.
That takes care of how to price your services as a social media freelancer that charges a flat fee. But wait, there’s more…
Factor a commission into your pricing
When you build a sales funnel for a client, you are building them a tool that is a virtual employee, selling for them 24/7.
A sales funnel takes tweaking and optimizing so that it performs better and better over time. So you also want to negotiate to get a commission on all sales from the funnels you build.
While some sales may come from other sources besides Facebook Ads, the precedent must be set that you and your client are a team. You want to be working together on collecting data and driving sales, rather than competing against each other for traffic. A commission of 5–10% (or more) on all sales through your sales funnel (or sales from ads only) is appropriate.
If your client can’t be convinced on these commission terms consider charging a higher price to build the funnel and run the ads. Commission percentage is negotiable and must strike a balance where both you and your client feel you’re getting a good value.
Presenting your pricing
There are two ways you can present your social media marketing pricing: bundle the cost of the setup with the cost of ads management or break them down separately. Ensure that you are establishing a fixed-term contract of 3 to 12 months — not a month-to-month agreement. Your client needs to be in it for the long run with you and not expect enormous results in the first 30 days — especially if it’s a new campaign they’ve never run Facebook Ads for before.
You can also include the option to cancel the contract with the payout of a lump sum or a percentage of the remaining fees owed. This is just in case they should ever want to cancel the agreement, they have an out. You don’t want to work with a client that doesn’t want to work with you.
Optional: to increase your client’s confidence in your ability, you may choose to offer a Facebook Advertising guarantee. The offer would include a contingency that if you don’t get them results, you don’t get paid. Only offer this if you’re confident in your ability to deliver results!
Here’s an example of guarantee you could offer:
“ROLLING 30 DAY GUARANTEE: If I’m not bringing you results, you shouldn’t pay me. That’s why I offer a Rolling 30 Day Guarantee. At the end of each month you can decide if my work is making you profits. If I’m not bringing you the results you want you can choose to cancel our agreement and I’ll refund your last month installment to your Facebook Advertising management.”
Fine-tuning the fee
Knowing how to price your services as a social media freelancer is a large part of the sales process. Be bold. Remember that good online marketing ain’t cheap. However, if you find you’re striking out, you may be setting your social media marketing pricing too high, too low, or not effectively translating the value in your offer.
Check out social media professionals’ Facebook Groups for input on what others are charging.
Did you find this helpful? What’s your experience with figuring out how to price your services as a social media freelancer? Any tips?

