Every contractor I meet asks me the same question in the first ten minutes.
“What should I be paying for this?”
It is a fair question, and nobody gives a straight answer. An agency sends a proposal with a big number and no explanation. A friend says just run ads. Someone else says do it yourself, it is free.
So here are the real numbers. What each option costs, what you actually get, and what is fair for a one-person business to pay.
Start with what you make, not what they charge
Most solo home service operators I work with bring in $8,000 to $10,000 a month. Some months more, some months a lot less.
A healthy number to spend on getting found is around 2 to 3 percent of what you bring in. At $9,000 a month, that is $180 to $270.
That is the number to hold in your head. If a price is far above it, the maths has to work very hard to make sense. If a price is far below it, you are probably paying with your evenings instead of your money.
What each option really costs
| Option | Every month | Your time | What you end up with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do nothing | $0 | None | Word of mouth only. You stop growing at the edge of who already knows you. |
| Build it yourself on Wix or Squarespace | $20 to $50 | Hours every week | A website that goes stale in a month, because you are on a roof, not at a laptop. |
| Google Ads | Whatever you feed it | Some | Calls that stop the day you stop paying, at about $66 a lead. |
| A traditional agency | $2,000 to $3,000 | Little | Good work you cannot afford at $9,000 a month in revenue. |
| Hiring each person separately | About $3,000 | Managing six people | Everything, and a second job managing it. |
Where the $3,000 number comes from
People hear “three thousand a month” and think it is made up. It is not. It is just six different people, each doing one job.
| The job | What it normally costs |
|---|---|
| Someone to post on your four apps | $1,200 |
| Someone to work on Google for you | $800 |
| Someone to edit your job photos | $350 |
| Someone to look after your Google page | $300 |
| Someone to answer your reviews | $200 |
| A website built and kept online | $150 |
| Every month, forever | $3,000 |
You do not need all six on payroll. But if any of these jobs is not getting done, that is the part of your business that is invisible to a customer searching right now.
Why ads look cheap and are not
Ads feel like the fast answer. You put in $500, you get calls this week. It looks like control.
Then you do the maths. A lead in home services costs about $66. Not a job, a lead. Maybe one in three turns into work. So a booked job costs you around $200 in ad spend, on a job that might be worth $200.
And the day your card stops working, the calls stop the same hour. Nothing you paid for stays. I wrote out the full arithmetic in why Google Ads usually lose money for local home service pros.
Lola spent $6,000 on ads over a year. At the end of it she did not show up on the map in her own town. That is not a story about Lola. That is what happens to a small budget in an auction against companies with big ones.
“Free” has a price too
Doing it yourself is the option that looks like it costs nothing.
Count it properly. Two hours a week writing posts, answering reviews and fixing the website. That is eight hours a month. Eight hours you could be on a job at $60 an hour is $480 of work you did not do.
That is before the honest part: after a busy week, it does not get done. Every contractor I have worked with started with good intentions and an empty Google Business Profile that had not been touched in eight months.
Five questions to ask before you pay anyone
Whoever you hire, including me, ask these first.
- Do I own the website when I leave? If the answer is no, you are renting your own name. Walk away.
- Is there a contract? A year-long contract is a way to keep you after the work gets thin. Month to month means they have to keep earning it.
- What happens in month four? Plenty of people will build you a website. Ask what they do in the fourth month, when the new-website feeling is gone.
- Who answers my reviews? Reviews are the thing customers read before they call you. If nobody owns that job, it will not happen.
- Do you buy reviews? If anyone says yes, leave. Google can shut your page down for it, and your page is worth more than the work they are selling.
What I charge, and why
I charge $249 a month, or $174 a month if you pay for the year. That is roughly 8 percent of what the same work costs if you hire it out person by person.
It is not cheaper because it is less. It is cheaper because AI agents do the repeating parts, and I check the work. One person plus good software can look after a hundred businesses. Six people looking after one business cannot.
You get the website, the Google page, the posts, the review answers and the photos, on one bill, with nothing to sign. You can see exactly what is in each plan on the pricing page, and what happens week to week on how it works.
I am not the right answer for everyone. If you are booked out for three months and turning work away, spend nothing and come back when that changes.
The short answer
If you make $8,000 to $10,000 a month, somewhere between $150 and $300 a month is a fair price for having the online side done properly.
Below that, you are buying a website and nothing else. Above that, you are paying agency rates for a one-van business.
And if it does not bring you at least one extra job a month, it is the wrong spend at any price. That is the only number that really matters. You can see the businesses in Logan I do this for and judge the work yourself.
