How Many Clients/How Much Business to Handle

[Reggie37]

Things have become increasingly difficult in local in the past years which is changing how one should work in order to eat but not be overwhelmed. If you were doing 70% of the work, how many clients would you limit yourself to assuming a 40 hour week in fairly competitive markets?

Let me know if I need to provide more details.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hmmm, that's a tough question Reggie, but a good one!

I know given today's complicated local optimization tasks, I sure couldn't handle very many clients at a time if I were working by myself.

I'll try to remember to Tweet this tomorrow morning if we don't get any play today.

 

[Linda Buquet]

OK Reggie,

Just Tweeted, so let's see if we can get some Local Search Consultants to weigh in.

What do you say???

Ya, I know it depends. On which services you offer, if you have a team, etc. etc. But I think it's a great question and worth discussing.

 

[Reggie37]

Thanks, Linda. I am currently in an agency that uses contractors and I have quite a few clients. Eventually I would like to be doing my own consulting so I want to know what a good bandwidth should be.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Reggie,

It depends on a lot of different factors.

Just a few would be:

1) Are you doing 1 time optimization or monthly recurring?

2) How do you work your strategy? How long does a client take you to work on each month? How often do you work on them during the month?

3) How competitive is the market? Not just industry but location? 1 client in one industry will take only a few months because of their location (and therefore competition) and another will be in the same industry but take 6+ months because of their location (high traffic city).

 

[Reggie37]

Thanks Joshua,

1) Monthly

2) I would run an audit and address issues in order of importance. I can usually do all the work necessary to show improvement in about 3-5 hours.

3) I would stay away from docs, lawyers, dentists, etc. and businesses would mostly be in the Denver area.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Thanks Joshua,

1) Monthly

2) I would run an audit and address issues in order of importance. I can usually do all the work necessary to show improvement in about 3-5 hours.

3) I would stay away from docs, lawyers, dentists, etc. and businesses would mostly be in the Denver area.

At 5 hours, I would say 16 clients. That has you working part time at 80 hours a month. You will need the other time to do admin things, like bills, emails, marketing, research etc. You will also need to build in some time just in case for unfortunate things like troubleshooting a client ranking, dealing with a hacked site, dealing with a penalty, etc. Hopefully you never run into those issues but if you do, you aren't backed up against the wall.

Just start there. If you find you want to work more or have way more time, my advice would be to up the client load. Really though, once you get your first 1-3 clients, you'll realize the time commitment and you'll be set. But hopefully this helps for planning

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Joshua for the great questions and advice.

 

[Reggie37]

Hey thanks I really appreciate it. Lots of food for thought.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Thanks Joshua for the great questions and advice.

No problem