I've spent ten years building the Specialist Network and writing checks to over 4,000 writers. I've seen every invoice, every margin calculation, every pricing model this industry has invented to separate you from your budget.
Here's what keeps me up at night: the 'Fixed Price SEO Package' is simultaneously the safest-feeling and most exploited service in digital marketing. You love the predictability.
Agencies love the margin.
Let me be direct. When you purchase a 'Gold Package' for $2,000, you're not buying $2,000 worth of SEO. You're buying a process — and whether that process builds your authority or funds someone's overhead depends entirely on questions you've never thought to ask.
I built AuthoritySpecialist.com to 800+ pages because I believe in proving things, not promising them.
This guide is that proof applied to pricing. I'm going to show you exactly where your money goes, which costs agencies bury in fine print, and how to distinguish between a package that compounds your authority and one that compounds someone else's profit margin.
Key Takeaways
- 1The Dirty Math: On your $2,000 package, roughly $600 reaches the human actually doing work. The rest? Overhead, sales commissions, and profit margins you never agreed to fund.
- 2The Website Test: Pull up the agency's own blog. If it's a graveyard of 2019 posts, they're outsourcing your content to the same people they wouldn't trust with their own.
- 3The Link Bait-and-Switch: 'Includes link building' often means 'includes the labor to email people.' The actual placement fees? That's your problem—surprise invoice incoming.
- 4The Break-Even Secret: Agencies price packages to lose money on you for 3 months and profit starting month 4. Armed with this, you can negotiate shorter trial terms without guilt.
- 5The Dilution Trap: Any package targeting 10+ keywords is spreading your budget so thin it can't move the needle anywhere. Three verticals. Maximum. Everything else is noise.
- 6When Fixed Fails: Packages work brilliantly for content production and audits. They collapse spectacularly for crisis recovery or anything requiring adaptive strategy.
- 7The Generalist Tax: Agencies serving 47 industries have templates for none of them. Vertical specialists cost more because they've already made your industry's mistakes.