Be damn serious about what you do
Last week I talked to a provider, let's call him Jim. Jim offered to help me set up some online ads, in exchange for $6,000 US Dollars, spread across 3 months.
Depending on what these ads do, that could be an incredible deal. If I spend $6k and land a client that makes me $20k—that's roughly $14k of profit.
However, it could also net me absolutely nothing.
When you're faced with such a big win/big loss scenario, you usually want to anchor your risk with some sort of guarantee. Something that helps you hedge your bets and protect your upside. For example, if Jim offered to show me how he set up the ads, or even record a short video of it. That alone may be worth it because then even if the ads failed to bring the desired results, I could now iterate on them myself without needing to tie myself to Jim to create results.
If the ads worked effectively, I would have no reason to not continue to use Jim.
The reason that I opted to not do business with Jim is because he could not offer me any guarantees. Not even, "If you get no increase in traffic I refund your money" which is a pretty silly guarantee because web traffic always goes up when you run ads. It would at least be something. Professional guarantees are an indicator that you're not a hobbyist—you've got skin in the game.
If you don't stand behind your services, why should I trust them?
For example, I give all of my clients a TWO-WEEK refund window. Any time within the first 14 days of working together, I will refund 100% of your money. Keep in mind some of my projects are 80% complete by then. This is an absurdly generous refund policy, but it also communicates very clearly: I'm damn serious about what I do.
So far, no one has ever used their right to request a refund.
Jim seems like a nice guy, and who knows, his services may be great. But $6k is a lot of money to risk finding out that you may not be damn serious about what you do.
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