Three short explainers on how a flat-fee monthly retainer actually works — what the prices buy, what the cadence looks like, and when the package is the wrong fit altogether. Read in any order.
The posts
The recurring questions that come up before a buyer subscribes to a fixed-scope monthly retainer. Each post is a single sit-down read.
Hourly agencies make the meter the deliverable. A flat-fee monthly retainer makes the artifact the deliverable — and the math rarely gets better for the buyer in an hourly engagement.
A monthly deliverable should be countable, dated, and shippable without a sales call. Here is what four SEO articles per month means at Slatelock — week by week.
A fixed-scope retainer is wrong when the buyer’s inputs will not fit the scope. The answer is not to expand the package — it is to point the buyer somewhere the scope actually fits.
"LSA audit cost" can mean three very different numbers: the audit fee, the LSA spend that passes through, or the hidden cost of bad leads. Here is the breakdown, and what $790/mo actually covers.
Google Ads rebuild cost for a small business can mean a one-time account rebuild or a recurring management fee. Here is what each one pays for, with current published benchmarks.
A fixed deliverable, not a fixed invoice
The store list one tier end-to-end, with three more queued on the same cadence. Cancel before the next renewal — no discovery call, no scope creep, no surprise invoice.