r/agency

Seeking advice from the agency crowd. Just got approached by a Fortune 500 conglomerate (massive DTC portfolio) for what could be a solid engagement. Revenue would be meaningful for us.

BUT their contract is brutal. A few red flags:

• 90-day payment terms (standard, but combined with everything else...)
• Unlimited liability indemnification — I cover their losses, they cap theirs
• IP ownership — Anything I create is theirs forever, I can't reuse methodologies
• One-way audit rights — They can audit anytime, I pay for it

It reads like it was written to shift all risk to suppliers. I get it, they're big, they're cautious. But this feels excessive.

My question: Has anyone else dealt with this? Did you:

• Push back and renegotiate? (Did they actually budge?)
• Just sign it and build the risk into pricing?
• Walk away?

I'm a 13 person shop, bootstrapped. This deal would be great for growth but I don't want to sign something that tanks us if anything goes wrong.

Part of me wants to push back on liability caps. But I'm also paranoid they'll just say "take it or leave it" and I lose the deal entirely.

What's your playbook here?

Ops is one of those things your business does, even if you don’t think it does it (like marketing)

You don’t think you do it until you have thought about it and put systems and processes in place.

But systems and processes aren’t Ops, they are the tactics by which you achieve Ops.

And at first your tactics are, well… scrappy, and tightly coupled with everything else you are doing.

To work out what Ops should do, get yourself a definition of what Ops is trying to achieve.

Here’s mine:

>Deliver the work we’ve won, on time, to the right quality, to a target profit and get paid for it.

All the rest: Resourcing, utilisation reports, integrations between systems, project management, are tactics to achieve that.

This explains why your Head of Ops (or you, the founder, if you’re still wearing that hat) ends up with such a broad remit. Because at first the way you achieve that goal is basically the same as “Run the business”. Hire a good team, manage the clients, say the right price, chase the invoices.

As you grow, some of those thing become entire departments (HR, Finance, Client Services) and others stay Ops and get more structured.

It also explains Ops FOMO. When you are smaller you don’t have time for all of the things the LinkedIn consultants tell you high performing agencies do. You have to make time for some of it but if you went all in you’d be using your resources badly and would end up with slick systems but no sales.

You can do Ops badly just as easily by over complicating things too early as you can by not organising yourself at all.

So you need to work out the Ops you need today, create it, and then get on with it.

What’s “Ops” at your agency?

Most of the people here use domains

But how about low volume outreach from nice gmail account emails?

Hey everyone,

8 months back I quit my job and started a small digital agency. Mainly working with fashion and wellness brands.

Thought it would be exciting. And it is.

But also 90% of the time it’s just me - client calls, invoices, fixing website at 2am, and overthinking 😂

The good part: I’ve worked with 15+ brands now. Learned a ton.

The hard part: Still don’t know if I’m doing things "right".

Anyone else here running something solo?

What was the weirdest thing you had to learn in year 1?

Would love to hear your stories. Feeling less alone helps 😅

Guys, looking for advice from other YouTube agency founders.

My agency has been mostly doing B2B video editing work for the past years, doing alright, but with everything going onI've been trying to pivot towards YT strategy work, as this is something we've helped a few clients with and is honestly more rewarding.

The problem is finding those leads.

Similar to B2B video editing, there isn't a clear way to find businesses that need this type of work.

Using sales navigator for example, you need to first find founders/companies with the right business size, but then you need to go one by one to see who has a YT channel and then who of those clearly needs help (bad thumbnails, titles, low numbers, etc).

I've tried other ways like using ChannelCrawler, but it also has limitations because there's no clear way to filter anything that is not a business, and there are MANY channels belonging to "businesses" that post a video every 3 years or are just really bad fits.

And then of course, from those who look like a good fit, I'm lucky if one in 20 engage in the DMs. So this whole process takes A LOT of time.

Anyway, I'm looking for other fellow YT strategy founders to hopefully give me some light on how do you approach lead generation, in a consistent way, or if you spot something I'm missing in this whole thing.

Thanks!

I blame AI and not Summer but we've been on a real nice dry spell for a few months. Luckily existing work is strong and we're not in any kind of crisis but I had a road map for a new hire in Sept and we're well short of that happening.

But rain -> pours. Four random lead opportunities this week. Two via linkedin, 1 via white label partnership, 1 via network.

Nothing closed, still nothing ok the books but the meetings went well and its nice to be looking at new opportunities again for the first time in a good while.

For agencies billing hourly or on retainers: has a client ever pushed back on an invoice and asked to see where the hours went? What did you show them, and did it settle it?

The opposite answer is also interesting: if it has never happened in years of billing, that says something too.

Asking because the proof is usually timesheets the agency wrote itself, and I wonder whether that holds up with a genuinely skeptical client.

Interested in your thoughts if you’ve served both markets. What did you enjoy about either segment? What did you find challenging?

Background: Google recently finished rolling out the new Search Console feature that lets you track the performance of a brand’s social media profiles and content.

You can now see the queries, positions, clicks, and impressions associated with social profiles. You can also see which posts and videos are ranking for those queries.

I run an SEO agency, and we use search demand to come up with content ideas. And with more and more social media ranking in Google, we also started to create an opportunity list to clients so that they can share with their social media for content idea suggestion.

This new data could also help connect SEO research with social content planning. It could also show clients the additional search visibility created by their social content.

I am still working out how useful this will be in practice, especially for reporting and attribution.

For other agency owners (especially SMMA):

• Are you planning to include this data in client reports?
• Are clients already asking about their social visibility in Google?
• How would you separate the agency’s contribution from visibility created by the client’s existing social team?
• Do you see this mainly as a reporting feature, or could it change how you research and plan content?
• Would you use this data to decide whether an idea should become a blog post, social post, video, or multiple formats?
• What limitations or misleading conclusions should agencies watch out for?

I would be interested in hearing how people are turning this data into actual decisions instead of adding another chart to a report.

I'm a computer science student, I want to build a service based agency so i can earn some money

I am prepared to learn and build whatever to be honest but I don't know what to start with

I tried website development but didn't get much success in it only built a couple sites here n there

As alot of people know about free tools and ai it's getting hard to find clients for that

What can I start doing with 0 money investments as I'm broke

A service whcih I can learn and start selling

I would really appreciate some insights from all the successful agency owners here.

My goal is nothing crazy it's just a 700-1k dollars per month As I'm from India and that is enough for me to start with and taking care of my family and getting rid of my education loan

Me and my cofounder are both very technical, but marketing and client acquisition has always been the part we struggle with the most.

We used to use Popsy to find Reddit posts from people actively looking for an MVP, app, developer, etc. It was honestly pretty useful for finding people who already had intent.

A few weeks ago it stopped working properly, and now it seems to be completely down.
So I decided to just build our own.
We already have an internal admin dashboard for our agency, so I added a lead generation tool that finds relevant Reddit posts, ranks them based on how good of a lead they are, and tracks our outreach.
Basically our own little Popsy, built specifically for our agency.
I’m thinking of adding X and LinkedIn later too.
For anyone who used Popsy before it went down, what are you using now to find people who are actively looking for your service?

Like many people I had a lot of work 10+ years ago when pretty much everyone was doing some kind of freelance work.

At some point I got a client that kept growing and I hired a team to support thst client, but in the process I learned that I'm not a person who thrives in building a business - I'm more of a "basement scientist" kind of guy.

Anyway... my team grew to 20 with pretty much 10+ hrs/day of work requests including myself. I built a website, case studies etc. as an approach to gain at least another big client and create a sustainable business, but I also have a family so my time was extremely limited, I put 24/7 time for this single client.

This kept on for 8 years then one day they said that they need to reduce their dev budget by 80%. Unfortunately I had to let go of lots of team members since we didn't had any other client to support our income.

Currently we are on a skeleton crew supporting this client. I reach out to old contacts but everyone is now doing DIY with Claude. I also submitted my CV for remote and hybrid work as I need to support my family, but market is insane right now.

Apologies for the rant... my question is, in the current market - especially with AI - how are you acquiring stable clientele outside of direct referrals?

My current plan is to focus for the next 3 months on Shopify but we are starting at zero. I've also been posting on LinkedIn for the past 6 months to no avail and 0 leads.

Hi, I’m the cofounder of a boutique marketing agency and one of our best strengths is our performance marketing. A brand came to us since they earlier got burnt by another agency and had spent 45K only to generate sales of 50K (they are a single product company priced at $699 per order).

We helped them out and within 16 days generated sales of over 150K on a 16K Ad spend almost hitting a 9x+ ROAS.

Their website clearly states that the product will be shipped next year (August 2027). All customers are informed of the same before they purchase from them. But Shopify decided not to release our funds stating there will be chargebacks and we must start shipping asap in order to get access to those funds. The problem is that the 200K was going towards production itself. The company is now trying to raise Money from outside in order to go thru with production and eventually get their funds released from Shopify.

Is there any other way around this ?

We’re a small agency that handles brand launches, creative, and ongoing account management. Because we're a lean team where everyone wears a few different hats, we hit a real wall when it comes to dedicated social media strategy and execution.

One of our Shopify clients gave us an 8-month ultimatum to turn their sales around and stop their cash burn (tech stack, shipping costs, agency fees, etc.). We’re trying to figure out our best move:

• Freelancer: Bring in a specialist focused purely on social media growth strategy.
• White-label agency: Partner with a team that can handle this account (and potentially help us with other accounts).
• In-house hire: Bring on a do-it-all person who can write copy, design graphics, manage the account, and drive actual growth.

Are we crazy to think we can find one in-house person who can handle high-end design and growth strategy, or is freelancing/white-labeling the obvious move on an 8-month clock?

I'm a developer researching how small agencies and freelancers (roughly 5–50 clients) handle monthly reporting and client retention. No product link, nothing to sell — I'm deciding what to build based on real workflows, and I'll share a summary of what I learn in this thread.

If you have 5 minutes, I'd love written answers to any of these:

1. Walk me through last month's reporting — from pulling data to the client receiving it. What tools, and how many hours across the team?

2. What do you pay today for reporting/analytics tooling, and what almost made you switch away from it?

3. Think of the last client you lost: when did you first sense it coming, and did anything in the data hint at it earlier?

4. How do you prepare for a client review meeting today?

5. What would have to be true for you to move 30 clients off your current reporting tool?

 Partial answers welcome. Brutal honesty even more welcome.

Hey everyone, curious if anyone's actively getting agency clients via Instagram or Facebook organic content?

We've mainly built our business off of X, Youtube and LinkedIn organic + referrals - but now looking to expand.

Would love to crowd source ideas for any formats that have worked for content!

Cheers

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working as a web designer for the past few years, with a lot of my client work coming through Upwork and referrals. I mostly work with Elementor and Squarespace.

I’m getting tired of constantly competing for projects and relying on a marketplace for the next client. So I’ve started building my own small web design agency and trying to bring in clients directly.

The delivery side isn’t really the problem. Client acquisition is.

Right now it’s inconsistent. Some months I’ll get 1–2 clients, and other months nothing comes in.

I’ve also been reading through this sub quite a bit, and one thing I’ve noticed is that many of the larger agencies seem to be very niched down, often into home services/blue-collar industries, with offers built around ads or lead generation rather than web design alone.

At the same time, AI website builders and vibe coding are getting better, and plenty of small businesses seem perfectly happy with a basic DIY website. So I’ve been thinking a lot about where web design agencies fit into the market going forward and how I should position mine.

I’d mainly love some perspective on two things:

1. For anyone who moved from Upwork/freelancing into an agency, what actually helped you build a predictable pipeline outside the platforms?
2. For those who niched down, how did you decide where to focus? Was it based more on client budgets/LTV, ease of reaching prospects, competition, existing experience, or something else?

I know there’s no one-size-fits-all answer here. I’m mostly curious to hear how people who are further along approached these decisions when they were at this stage.

Would really appreciate any advice or lessons learned.

I've been pretty "anti website" because my business is a marketing company, not a website company. So anytime we've needed to build landing pages or full websites (for seo), we've just included it in the package.

And i wish i could say i had a revalation and decided to start charging for it, but it kind of happened by accident. Since raising our floor pricing to $1250, we've lost out on a lot of enthusaistic potential clients simply because we had nothing to offer them. So in trying to find a middle ground that isn't marketing (they don't have the budget for it), i created a website / foundational package that helps businesses get their online prencese to a more respectable spot. A website, help setting up their google business profile, and helping them create their social media accounts.

While a couple of the closes were for those businesses that aren't quite ready for marketing yet, some of the clients we have closed also wanted to "reset" their online presence. And so it's been a nice little discovery that....well, we can charge for website work.

It also has helped with the process. Instead of it being super complicated with launching ads, seo, and a website. Now it's website, then marketing. A bit simpler.

And even more so, 6 websites at 1500 is an additional $9,000. Can't really complain about that.

One thing I like about how i've built my businesses is that.....i really have been leaving a lot of money on the table. 6.5 years worth of not having set up fees/ websites fees. Sometimes when i "fix" something (even accidently), it ends up with more revenue. Sometimes

This also lends itself for people getting on our maintenance program. Which currently we charge $100/month. BEST thing about it is that we have semi-sold marketing customers for when their ready to active their marketing.

Hi, my name is Duarte. I've been freelancing on Fiverr for about two years, mainly doing 3D CAD modeling for 3D printing.

Recently, I've become pretty tired of that area. It's getting harder to find good clients, there's a lot of price competition, and many clients simply aren't willing to pay enough.

Because of that, I'm looking to move into a different area: building custom web dashboards and internal tools for businesses, particularly solutions that use AI to solve real problems or make existing workflows more efficient.

For example, this could mean building dashboards with AI assistants or specialized agents that can analyze business data, organize information, search the web for oportunities, generate reports, work with internal documents, automate repetitive tasks, or perform some other specific function built around the clients workflow.

I'm not entering this area from nowhere. I've been programming for most of my life, and since LLMs became available I've spent a lot of time researching and building increasingly complex systems around them.

For example, for the last six months I've been developing a fairly large AI platform from scratch. It combines conversational AI, specialized agents, RAG, document ingestion and OCR, long-term memory, agentic web search, deep research, structured knowledge extraction, and multi stage retrieval pipelines.

A large part of the work has also involved solving problems that aren't handled well by normal RAG implementations. I've designed my own retrieval and knowledge organization architecture that structures information hierarchicaly, understands which parts of a knowledge base are relevant to a question, dynamically narrows the retrieval scope, and gives agents much more precise context instead of simply embedding documents and performing similarity search. I've had to work on everything from retrieval architecture and context management to agent orchestration, backend infrastructure, databases, APIs, and the frontend stuff itself.

So technically, I'm confident that I can build this kind of software. The part I'm struggling with is figuring out how to actually turn that skillset into clients.

For people who already freelance in web development, automation, internal tools, SaaS, or AI consulting:

- Where did you find your first clients in this area?

- Is cold outreach actually effective, and if so, what kinds of businesses should I target?

- Would you focus on freelance platforms, LinkedIn, email outreach, communities, partnerships, or something else?

- How do you present this kind of service without just sounding like another person trying to sell AI automation?

- Would you sell predefined services/packages, or approach businesses first, identify inefficiencies, and then propose a custom solution?

I'm particularly interested in working with businesses where a relatively small custom application could save employees several hours of work every week or solve a workflow they currently handle manually.

I'd really appreciate advice from anyone who has already gone through this transition or currently gets clients for this kind of work. I'm technically comfortable building the products, I'm mainly trying to understand how to position myself, find the right businesses, and land the first few clients in this new area.