Per-link and per-package pricing
The marketplace model: fixed deliverables at fixed prices. You carry the strategy risk, the seller carries the execution risk — and the boundary between those responsibilities is refreshingly clear.
Best for buyers who know what to order. The transparency also makes comparison shopping honest, which keeps the market's prices closer to real costs than any other model.
Project and retainer pricing
Projects price an outcome ('rank this landing page cluster'); retainers price ongoing capacity. Both bundle judgment with labor, so both cost more per unit of execution — you're buying decisions.
Watch for retainer drift: months billed at full price for diminishing activity. The antidote is monthly deliverable lists, agreed in advance, checked after.
Performance pricing: the beautiful trap
'Pay per ranking' sounds perfect until you see the incentives it creates: keyword cherry-picking, ranking checks on terms nobody searches, and short-term tactics that collapse after the invoice clears.
Nobody can guarantee rankings, so anyone pricing on them is either gaming the metric or about to disappear. Hybrid models (base plus modest performance bonus) are the survivable version.
Picking the right model for you
Know what to buy: per-package. Need someone deciding: retainer. One-off sprint: project. Performance-only: skip it.
And remember the meta-rule — whichever model you pick, verification beats trust. The invoice structure matters less than whether you can audit what it paid for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Only with tight contract definitions: specified keywords, check tools, measurement windows. Without all three, it's a mislabeled retainer.
You're paying for strategy, account management and priority — real costs, but costs you may not need if you can direct execution yourself.