The Cost of Lawyer Marketing
In the following article, I will break down the pricing and hourly rates of attorney advertising Web development. These numbers are based on my experience working as an editor in the industry and having access to both target and actual number of man-hours and actual pricing data. Specific circumstances may vary.
Template Sites
Two Steps Below Basic: $3000
Writing: 8 hours (FTE? No way. Temp from the staffing agency.)
Editing: 2 hours
Administrating: 5 hours
Designing: 0 hours
Consulting: 0 hours
Development: ? hours (Automated; outsourced to India.)
Grand Total: 15 hours
What are you paying for?
Let's say you're paying for a really cheap site at $3000 per year, which means you're paying about $200 per hour. In other words, you're paying for the executives who push papers and have meetings and do not work on your site. You're paying for the managers who push papers and do not work on your site. You're paying for the human resources director, HR personnel, marketers, janitors, gardeners, shuttle bus drivers, and receptionists. None of whom work on your site. You're paying for facilities so all of these people can have meetings about not working on your site. You're paying for parking lots so people can think about not working on your site while walking in to the office. You're paying for a lot of things that don't actually get you any results. One expense of which is the fact that you're paying a commission to a salesperson who didn't do anything for you but get you to pay a whole bunch more money than you had to for what you're getting.
The companies say they give you an advantage. Ask them if they will guarantee search engine rankings. Ask them if they will guarantee new clients. Ask them if they will guarantee that your site will not violate rules of professional responsibility. More importantly, ask them to put it in writing. They won't. Because they can't. No one can. Well, I can give you an opinion letter on why your site probably does or probably does not violate the rules. But they won't. Well, some others might. But not a single one, not me, not anyone, can guarantee you results.
Now to really depress you.
Custom Sites
One Step Above Basic: $15,000
Writing:16 hours (Maybe FTE, maybe temp.)
Editing: 4 hours
Administrating: 10 hours
Designing: 10 hours
Consulting: 1 hour
Developing: 8 hours
Dynamic Updates: 0.1 hours
Grand Total: 50 hours (Less than, but I'm generous.)
An average custom site might cost you $15,000 per year. This doesn't get you a bad site, but it doesn't really get you all that much, either. You get more, but who wants more crap? A little bit of crap is enough, thanks. For $15,000 per year, you might get a site that has 10 pages and about 3000 to 5000 words of custom text. Sure, you get some site text that refreshes every now and again, but that fresh content you're paying for? That's the same recycled content that every other customer who buys the same product is paying for. I don't even know if it's worth 0.1 billable hours if divided among all firms and lawyers who are using or have ever used it.
I wrote one of those article sets for the design firm at which I was formerly an editor. It was four articles and a brilliant piece of work. I've Googled it many times, and it always comes up on different Web sites. I always love to read it. (I have a copy, but it's more fun to read on some attorney's Web site whom I have never met.) How long did it take me? Research and all? The whole 4000 word set of articles took me all of about six hours. That set has made my old design firm, well, I don't know, multiple tens of thousands of dollars maybe?
But let's get back to what a $15,000 site will get you. At about 50 billable hours worth of work, you're paying $300 per hour. Thought your old template site was bad?
How about a $25,000 site? How many hours? You might get a couple of more hours of writing because you may get as many as 8,000 words of custom text. Designing will be close to the same. Editing will be the same. Consulting will be the same. Developing might take a little longer, because it takes a little longer to code a few more pages.
You get 8,000 words for $25,000? More or less, perhaps. If you get a good writer, then that's still not worth it. An 8,000 word article might get you $1500 from a national magazine with a large circulation. So, what then? $23,500 for the design? Or another $1500 for the design, and $22,000 in executive bonuses? Well, that's not exactly right. Remember, we've still got to pay all of those other people and facilities from the template site example. But they're still getting the same amount. They only ones who get more are the executives. O, wait, and the salesperson who just got you to pay $25,000 per year for something you need ... but you didn't need to pay that much to get.
And it's that bad if you luck out and get one of the good writers, which is maybe 1 in 5? If you luck out the bad way and get a bad writer, which is much more likely, then you're paying $25,000 for a pile of garbage. Maybe a nice looking pile of garbage. But still a pile of garbage. If you're going to take that risk, then give me $24,000 and go spend the other $1,000 on a chimpanzee. The results should be similar.
I won't take the energy to go through a wide range of pricing breakdowns. I'll skip to a big one. Let's go with $100,000 of cold, hard cash. (Or credit card, if you prefer?)
First, the parameters. Unique text on your site? How about a whopping 15,000 words? Is that a lot? Not really. A New Yorker or Newsweek feature article might be 15,000 words. The design? It's probably nice. Many are. You probably have some pictures from a stock photo site. Maybe even a Flash file or two. Certainly your site will be "optimized," which means that they fool the search engines into thinking that you're relevant to what people are actually searching for. You may or may not be. But you might as well pay $100,000 per year just to get people not to call you. Right?
Next, the billable hours. You might want to close your eyes.
Writing: 24 hours
Editing: 4 hours
Designing: 12 hours
Consulting: 1 hour
Administrating: 12 hours
Developing: 12 hours
Testing: 1 hour
Dynamic Updates: 0.1 hours (Yep, even for you. Sorry.)
Grand Total: 67 hours
WHAT?? That's $1492.53 per billable hour. Wow. That's a pretty nice gig.
It gets worse. I saw a firm paying in excess of $167,000 per year. I've heard bigger numbers. Yikes!
Before I go, I should also mention that you may be paying them to host your site on their servers. Are you? Do you even know if you are? Did you know that you can pay maybe $4 or $8 per month for that? And that with the $4 or $8 per month hosting, you’re getting the same service? There’s no magic legal site hosting service. Lawyer Web sites are often less, much, much less, complex than any business site.
But wait. One more note. This article is more than 1200 words long. I spent about an hour writing it. Is your site 1200 words long? What do you think? Did it take them an hour to write your site? Two?
Content is king. But you shouldn’t have to pay like it is.
|