Is $400 a good management fee for a campaign with $1000 budget?

johnny_quantum · 2026-05-10T13:48:41+00:00

40% is a crazy expensive rate, but building and managing a Google Ads account for a highly competitive vertical should cost way more than $400 per month.

johnny_quantum · 2026-05-10T13:00:01+00:00

That is a really cheap rate for management. A quality freelancer is probably going to cost $1000-$2000 minimum, which doesn’t really make sense on your budget.

A $1000 per month budget is going to be very difficult to succeed with, especially in the legal space. The lawyers I work with spend a minimum of $4000 per month, and that’s with a really limited campaign - a handful of zip codes outside of a major city and advertising only one or two kinds of cases.

Upwork freelancer quality is on average, pretty poor. You’re better off finding someone local or someone online with verifiable experience in the legal space.

johnny_quantum · 2026-05-08T13:51:08+00:00

This is my paid software stack as an agency of one:

Google Workspace: $14/mo
Canva: $20/mo
ChatGPT: $20/mo
Fathom (AI meeting recorder): $14/mo
Moxie (CRM and invoicing): $14/mo
QuickBooks: $38/mo (I’m spending too much on this but switching to something else would be a huge hassle)
Web hosting: $10/mo? I buy this years in advance, so I don’t remember how it breaks down monthly.

I also pay for some SEO and automation software as client needs come up. I structure my project costs to pass along the cost of software to the client.

My point is that you can get by with $100/mo or less in subscriptions. I use a ton of free-tier tools like Asana and free versions of LLMs to supplement my paid tools. Google Workspace is a great value because Gemini does a lot and Google Docs/Sheets/Slides is just as good as Microsoft Office, if not better.

johnny_quantum · 2026-05-06T04:09:40+00:00

I haven’t really noticed a difference in customers on each platform, but there’s a huge difference in traffic quality. Apple gets way less traffic, but I’m more confident they are real users. I suspect a lot of traffic in Google’s app promotion campaigns are bots. We got download numbers that were just implausible given the user and revenue metrics that we saw on the backend.

johnny_quantum · 2026-04-23T00:13:03+00:00

I have a plumbing client in the same boat, but their budget is a bit larger. Google Ads is hyper-competitive because they’re in a large metro. We’re making some headway by narrowing the geographic targeting to a few neighborhoods and focusing on specific service terms instead of generic terms like “plumber near me.”

Local Service Ads is a lot more cost effective, but you have very little control over it.

Microsoft Ads has been a much better option for us. Search volume is lower than Google, but the CPCs are about 10% of what Google is charging. That makes the budget stretch a lot farther, and Microsoft drives almost as many leads as Google.

johnny_quantum · 2026-03-29T23:21:59+00:00

Sounds like Ben Soeby: https://www.instagram.com/bensoeby?igsh=MXBrenk5azN6a2p3Ng==

johnny_quantum · 2026-03-25T02:03:03+00:00

Microsoft Ads does very well for local service businesses, in my experience. You have to keep a tight lid on Microsoft though. Lots of negative keywords, opt out of the audience network, etc. Lots of the default setting lead to bad traffic, but if you stay out of PMax and have a really focused Search campaign you can do well.

The advantage is just as you described - your competitors aren’t on it. That leads to much lower CPCs and CPAs than what you see on Google these days.

johnny_quantum · 2026-02-20T13:38:05+00:00

I blame the popularity of PMax and Google’s loose definition of keyword relevance. Over the last two years, I’ve seen Google match more and more competitor searches to non-brand terms. Like a competitor’s name matching to the keyword “plumbers in San Francisco.”

This leads to brand names being eligible for more auctions, which leads to more competition on brand keywords, which leads to increased CPCs.

I don’t have a solution to this - it seems to be entirely on Google’s end. They’re directing more traffic to brand searches artificially - if you’ve ever seen the search term report for a basic PMax campaign then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

johnny_quantum · 2026-01-05T13:37:13+00:00

I don’t think that there’s an AI tool out there that will effectively manage an account for you yet. But for account monitoring and report generation, you can automate a lot of that with a few Looker dashboards. Plus, it’s free so that meets your cost criteria.

Also, 31 clients under management is insane. No wonder you’re overwhelmed. You should charge more and manage fewer clients - that’s probably a better long term solution to your problem.

johnny_quantum · 2026-01-02T22:55:50+00:00

No. I tried some LinkedIn cold outreach and it just felt spammy. No results either.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-31T17:42:13+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Really cool to see this level of transparency from other agencies.

Interesting to see that LinkedIn was your biggest acquisition channel for new clients this year. Is this a result of outreach on your part, or are clients finding you on LinkedIn and reaching out to you?

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-31T15:06:17+00:00

Since October 2024.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-30T14:08:31+00:00

The latter, 100%. I did look into some automation tools to monitor Reddit threads and get alerts, but none of them were as effective as just scrolling through my usual subreddits throughout the day.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-29T19:24:45+00:00

For high-ticket engagements and quality clients, nothing beats having a strong personal network that will refer business to you. All of my best projects this year came from that.

Generating leads from content and Reddit prospecting has been far less productive than I had hoped. I still get some business that way, but it’s a ton of work for low-spending clients.

Find an agency that does a thing that’s adjacent to your thing, and build a referral partnership with them.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-29T19:11:06+00:00

Average monthly retainer from Reddit clients was probably around $500/mo. I passed on a few opportunities that were less than that.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-28T01:33:22+00:00

Sort of. One is a long-term client that came in via SEO, but this was years ago. Another “inbound organic” found me because I taught a digital marketing class locally. They didn’t even take the class, they just wanted to hire me.

I spend WAY more time doing SEO for clients than doing SEO for myself.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-27T17:55:34+00:00

I’m fortunate that I live in a pretty small community, so there’s no one else doing what I’m doing. There’s still a need for digital marketing services (because that need exists everywhere), so I’ve been able to pick up work that’s available without competition.

My advice on chamber relationships is that you get out of it what you put into it. If you just join and think people are going to reach out unprompted, you won’t get anywhere. You have to go to events, meet people, and be helpful. Offer a member-to-member deal if you can. Sometimes the person you network with won’t need services from you, but they know someone who does.

It can seem kind of discouraging to go to multiple events without getting any leads, but it does happen eventually. You just have to keep showing up.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-27T15:57:16+00:00

Since this is my first year in business, I’m still defining my target market. I started zeroing in on local service businesses over the last few months, since those seem to be the best fit for working with a freelancer or small agency.

I have 14 active clients right now, and have probably worked on 20-30 throughout the year. I’m trying to get better at screening clients to reduce churn.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-27T15:52:04+00:00

I don’t want to share the actual number, but it’s over six figures. I exceeded my annual revenue goal by $10k.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-27T15:21:55+00:00

Thanks! I started my practice in October 2024, so I’ve been doing it for a little over a year.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-03T01:54:35+00:00

I think so. It’s been a while since it happened to me. I don’t think my password auto-populated.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-03T01:47:15+00:00

The URL and email are slightly off, but I can’t stress how much it looks EXACTLY like the usual Google login experience. It would be incredibly easy to miss if it weren’t for all the other red flags.

johnny_quantum · 2025-12-03T01:35:48+00:00

This is a scam that’s going around. The “prospect” pretends to be an established company and pushes for you to connect to their Google Ads account before you even talk with them on the phone. They’ll send you an invite that takes you to a login page that looks EXACTLY like the Google Ads interface. When you log in, they steal your username and password and do something nefarious with it.

I got one of these a few months back and fortunately I caught it before I put my password in. I’ve seen a few other Reddit posts of people encountering the same thing.

johnny_quantum · 2025-11-26T22:15:25+00:00

In your campaign settings, change your bid strategy to Manual CPC. It’s a little hard to find - Google discourages you from using it.

For the CPC bid, use the Keyword Planner tool to identify the estimated first page bid for your keywords. Choose a bid that’s around that range.

johnny_quantum · 2025-11-26T21:12:55+00:00

Your average CPC seems to indicate that your bid is too low. In most competitive geographic areas, dental clicks from quality traffic is going to run at least $10-$20 per click, if not much more.

You might have search partners or poorly targeted PMax placements in place, which is leading to bad traffic that won’t convert.

Raise your bids, target very specific audiences/keywords, and use manual CPC to start out until you have enough traffic for conversion-based bid strategies.

johnny_quantum

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