Leverage - Specialized
Professional skills at $40 an hour
Web build, automation, financial analysis and production work, scoped and shipped, without a specialist sitting on your payroll between projects.
At a glance
Rate
$40 an hour
With volume
$36, then $34
Monthly cost
Starts at $1,732
Time to placement
7 to 14 days, scoping included
Shape
Project work more often than a standing seat
The bind
The work needs a professional and you cannot justify one
The site is two years stale and you already know which page is the problem. Your CRM and your accounting system do not speak to each other, so somebody retypes the same figures twice a week and occasionally gets one wrong.
Nobody in the building can tell you which of last quarter's jobs actually made money. The person who could work that out is not on your payroll, and hiring one for a question you ask twice a year makes no sense.
So the work waits for a quieter month, and the quieter month does not come.
Capabilities
Where the $40 goes
01 Web and technical
- Website design and build
- Landing pages and funnels
- CRM customization and automation setup
- Integrations between systems that currently do not talk
- E-commerce setup and database work
02 Financial analysis
- Cash flow forecasting and modeling
- Job and product profitability analysis
- Budget build and variance tracking
- Multi-entity or genuinely complex bookkeeping
- Dashboards that update without somebody rebuilding them
03 Production and paid media
- Video editing and production
- Paid advertising management
- Advanced SEO and analytics
- Brand and design system work
- Content strategy and senior-level copy
Scoping
Scope it, or it will drift
At $12 an hour a vague brief costs you a little money. At $40 it costs real money, and the drift is almost never the placement's fault. The brief said clean up the CRM. Nobody wrote down what clean meant, so forty hours went somewhere reasonable and nowhere you wanted.
So this tier gets scoped before it starts. What is being built, what done looks like, who accepts it, and roughly how many hours it should take. That is why placement here runs 7 to 14 days instead of 7 to 10. The extra days are the scoping and the first sprint, and they are the cheapest days in the engagement.
When the work is finished the hours stop. Specialized is usually a project shape rather than a permanent seat, and pricing a project by the hour only stays honest if somebody is counting.
Rates
Hours, discounts, and what a month actually costs
10 hours a week
$40.00an hour
$1,732 a month
Full rate, no discount applied.
20 hours a week
$36.00an hour
$3,118 a month
10 percent off the rate.
40 hours a week
$34.00an hour
$5,889 a month
15 percent off the rate.
Very little Specialized work should run at forty hours a week for long. Most of it arrives as a build, takes the hours it takes, and then drops to nothing or to a handful of maintenance hours at a lower tier.
Or a real hire
Down a tier, or off the rate card entirely
Expert, $15 an hour
Updating the site rather than building it. Bookkeeping rather than modeling. Posting rather than paid media.
Once something is built, running it rarely needs the person who built it.
A hire, or a specialist firm
When the work is continuous, senior and central to how you make money, an employee or a firm is the better answer and the rate stops being the deciding factor.
We will say so when that is the case, and no, that is not a LINX product.
There is no tier above this one. Build it here, then run it at Expert or Basic rates once it is built and written down.
Fit
Who Specialized fits
A strong fit
- You need technical work done and there is nobody in the building who can do it.
- You have a defined piece of work with an end to it, not a permanent seat to fill.
- You need analysis or production at a professional standard and cannot carry that salary.
- Somebody on your side can accept the work when it is finished.
Not the right fit
- Not for open-ended work with no definition of done. That is the one reliable way to waste money at this rate.
- Not for anything mission-critical with no owner at your end. Work gets finished, nobody accepts it, and it sits in a folder while you keep paying for the next thing.
- Not for maintenance you could buy at Expert rates. Build it here and run it there.
Questions
What owners ask before a build starts
What kind of web work can a Specialized placement handle?
Websites, landing pages, e-commerce stores, CRM customization, integrations between systems and workflow automation. Modern platforms, and most of what a small business needs on the web.
How quickly can I get started?
7 to 14 days. Specialized skills take longer to match, and the scoping conversation and the first sprint sit inside that window rather than after it.
What happens if the scope changes?
We adjust. Hours move, a different specialist comes in, or the work stops. Nothing here is a fixed contract you have to serve out. What we will do is tell you when a change is a new project wearing the old project's name.
Can I mix Specialized with the other tiers?
Yes, and it is the usual pattern. Specialized builds it, Expert or Basic runs it afterwards at a third of the rate.
Start the conversation
What is the build that keeps getting postponed?
Half an hour, no obligation. Describe the job and we will tell you roughly what it takes and whether buying it by the hour is the right way.
