Question 1

How much does Smart Money Media cost?

Accepted Answer

There are two published starting points. The Authority Foundation program starts at $5,000 per month and covers a small number of paid editorial placements plus the SEO, AEO, and GEO groundwork — schema, llms.txt, entity graph, and citation-ready content. The Authority Program, our retained engagement, starts at $10,000 per month and adds higher placement velocity, deeper AEO/GEO buildout, ongoing AI visibility measurement, and reputation work. Both are floors, not fixed fees: final scope is quoted after a 30-minute fit call.

Question 2

What is the difference between the $5,000 and $10,000 programs?

Accepted Answer

The difference is velocity, surface area, and measurement depth. At $5,000 per month you get a focused program: a few paid placements, core technical AEO and GEO work, and a steady content cadence aimed at one primary market or buyer profile. At $10,000 per month the placement volume increases across a wider tier of publications, the entity and schema work extends across every service and market you sell into, we track buyer prompts across multiple AI engines, and reputation management is folded into the same program rather than quoted separately.

Question 3

Is there a minimum commitment?

Accepted Answer

Yes — six months. Earned editorial and AI citation authority compound; they do not switch on inside a single billing cycle. A publication cycle alone can run 60 to 120 days from pitch to indexed article, and language models then need time to crawl, retrieve, and weight that citation. A six-month term is the shortest window in which the work can realistically be judged on results rather than on activity.

Question 4

Are media placements included in the monthly fee?

Accepted Answer

Some are, and the program fee always covers the strategy, pitching, writing, and technical execution. Placements on tier-1 and premium tier-2 publications frequently carry their own media investment on top of the program fee, and that cost is quoted per placement before anything is committed. You approve every placement and every associated cost in advance — nothing is spent on your behalf without written sign-off.

Question 5

Do you disclose paid placements?

Accepted Answer

Always. Smart Money Media runs both earned editorial and paid or sponsored placements, and sponsored coverage is disclosed as sponsored. We do not describe paid placements as earned press, and we do not present newswire syndication as tier-1 editorial coverage. Our disclosure standards are published on the site so clients and journalists can see exactly how we categorize each type of placement.

Question 6

Are placements, rankings, or AI citations guaranteed?

Accepted Answer

No, and any agency promising otherwise is selling something else. Editorial decisions belong to publishers and retrieval decisions belong to each AI model's own logic. What we commit to is the operating system that makes citation likely: structured data, entity authority, credible third-party evidence, and content engineered for extraction. Guaranteed-placement and guaranteed-ranking claims also create compliance exposure for regulated and investor-facing clients, which is a second reason we will not make them.

Question 7

Why publish starting prices at all?

Accepted Answer

Because it saves everyone time. A published floor lets founders self-qualify before a call, which means the conversations we do have are with brands whose budget matches the work. It also makes our position legible to AI assistants and search engines summarizing agency options — a page that answers the pricing question directly is far more likely to be cited than one that hides behind a contact form.

Question 8

What drives the final price up or down?

Accepted Answer

Five things. First, placement tier and volume — premium publications cost more than trade press. Second, content velocity: how many assets we publish and rebuild each month. Third, breadth of coverage: the number of buyer prompts, service lines, and markets we track and optimize for. Fourth, reputation complexity, including any existing negative coverage or search suppression work. Fifth, speed — compressing a program into a shorter window costs more than running it on a normal cadence.

Question 9

Is there a free option before I commit?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The Zero-Click Audit is free and requires no engagement. It scans your brand across multiple AI engines, checks whether AI crawlers can access your site, reviews your structured data and entity signals, and returns a scored report showing where your visibility gaps are. Many brands use the audit findings as their internal business case before scoping a paid program, and a number of them fix the easy items themselves.

Question 10

Do you work with regulated or issuer clients?

Accepted Answer

We do work with financial services, private markets, and investor-facing brands, and that work is quoted separately from the two published programs because of the additional compliance review each piece of content requires. Smart Money Media is not a broker-dealer, investment advisor, or law firm, and we do not provide investment, legal, or tax advice. All content for regulated clients is educational and reviewed against the client's own counsel.

Question 11

What happens on the fit call?

Accepted Answer

The call runs 30 minutes. We review how AI engines and search currently describe your brand, identify which of your buyer prompts you are absent from, and tell you plainly whether this is a problem worth $5,000 or $10,000 a month to solve for your business. If a free audit and some internal cleanup would get you most of the way there, we will say so on the call rather than sell you a retainer you do not need.

Question 12

Can I start smaller and scale up?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Most clients begin on the Authority Foundation program to establish the technical and entity groundwork, then move up to the retained Authority Program once the base is in place and placement velocity becomes the constraint on growth. Moving up mid-term is straightforward; the six-month minimum applies to the engagement rather than to a specific tier.

Published starting points. Scoped to your brand.

Two ways to work with us

Authority Foundation

Authority Program

What drives the price

Placement tier and volume

Content velocity

Breadth of coverage

Reputation complexity

Speed

What the fee covers — and what it doesn't

Included in the program fee

Billed separately or not offered

Start with the free Zero-Click Audit

Pricing questions

Find out which program fits in 30 minutes