HOW WE WORK
You decide every month if our work was worth it.
No setup fee. No upfront payment. No minimum commitment. No card on file. We do the work first — you review it, and you only pay if you're satisfied. Every month.
This page is a longer read — about ten minutes. Please take the time.
The way we work isn't standard, and the unusual parts are exactly the parts that need explaining.
If you'd rather not read this, that's an honest signal that we're probably not a fit. No hard feelings.
Two things to know before you read on
Every engagement starts with the DigitalCHECK.
We don't take on clients without it. It's a free analysis of your current local and AI visibility, delivered as a written report within 48 hours. Everything described below — the four steps, the scenarios, the pay-after-satisfaction billing — assumes that step has already happened, and that we've agreed on a Work Plan based on it. You can request the DigitalCHECK anytime; the link is at the bottom of this page.
The full Service Agreement is downloadable on this page.
If you'd rather read the contract first and the explanation afterwards, scroll down to Read the full Service Agreement. We don't think that's the more efficient path through the material on this page, but we're not going to hide the document from you. Four pages, plain English, no buried clauses.
THE ROLES
We're the pit crew. We don't drive the race — but you can't win one without us.
A pit crew doesn't win races. The driver does.
But no driver wins without a crew that gets the car race-ready — tires balanced, fuel calculated, every signal on the dashboard tuned and clean. The car shows up at the start line ready, or it doesn't show up at all.
That's our role.
We get your business race-ready for how customers actually find you in 2026 — across Google, Bing, and the AI platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini) that are starting to answer questions your customers used to type into a search bar. Listings, reviews, structured data, on-listing content, the technical fundamentals that decide whether a platform considers you a candidate at all.
We don't drive the race. We don't decide which roofer ChatGPT recommends to a homeowner in Dallas at 9pm on a Tuesday. That depends on your competition, your service quality, your reviews, your responsiveness — your work, not ours.
What we control: whether you're at the starting line in the first place. Right now, ChatGPT recommends just 1.2% of local business locations. In the same 2026 analysis of more than 350,000 locations, those businesses showed up in Google's local 3-pack 35.9% of the time. Most of them aren't missing from AI answers because their work is bad, but because the data the AI uses to evaluate candidates isn't there or isn't clean.
We work on getting you to the starting line. The race is still yours to drive.
WHY THIS WORKS, ECONOMICALLY
Why I can afford to do business this way.
A short note from me, since the rest of this page is about the model.
I've been running a digital marketing agency in Germany since 1998. That business is established and profitable. It pays for itself many times over and doesn't depend on what happens here in the United States.
That changes what I can offer with clearlisted. I don't need your money to keep the lights on. I don't need to lock you into a long-term contract to make my numbers work. I don't need to charge a setup fee to cover risk on my side. I can afford to do the work first, hand you a documented report, and let you decide afterwards whether it was worth paying for.
Most agencies can't say that, and they structure their contracts accordingly — advance payments, setup fees, minimum commitments, automatic renewals. Those clauses exist to protect the agency from the client. We work the other way around: we accept the risk so you don't have to.
— Werner Laske, Founder, clearlisted LLC
More about how we've worked since 1998 →
THE PROCESS
Four steps. The same four every month.
Nothing improvised. Nothing buried. The cycle is the same in every month of your Work Plan, first to last.
Step 00 — Before any of this: the DigitalCHECK
Before any of the four steps below, there is the DigitalCHECK. Every client relationship starts there.
The DigitalCHECK is a free analysis of your current local and AI visibility — Google, Bing, Apple Maps, ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini. We deliver it as a written report within 48 hours. Reading it takes ten minutes.
We don't agree to monthly work without it, because without it we don't know what to actually work on, and you don't know what to expect. It's also where we decide together whether we can realistically help — and whether the two of us are a fit at all.
Free. Written. 48 hours. No sales call required.
Then: your Work Plan
After the report, we talk about what it found. We estimate the work needed to fix what's actually holding you back and put it in a Work Plan: what gets fixed, roughly how long it takes, and what each month costs. There is no standard price. The amount follows from your report, not from a package.
You don't sign anything. We send the Work Plan together with the Service Agreement by email. If it looks right, reply and say you want to start. If something should be different, say so in the same reply and we'll send an updated version before any work begins.
Then — and only then — month one begins.
Step 01 — Agree
We agree which items from your Work Plan come first this month. In month one, that's settled with the Work Plan itself; after that, it's part of each review call. You see the list before any work starts. No surprises, no scope creep, no "we also did this little extra" line items at month-end.
Step 02 — Work
We perform the agreed work. Listings, reviews, schema markup, on-listing content, AI-visibility tracking — whatever the month called for. Every action is logged in a Plan-vs-Delivered report as it happens, not reconstructed afterwards.
Website changes only happen if you give us access. Without it, we focus on your listings and profiles.
Step 03 — Review
At month-end we meet for a review call of about 30 minutes. We walk you through what was planned, what was delivered, where reality differed from plan, and which items we'd take on next. You can ask why any single change was necessary, and you'll get a plain answer.
The call happens within 14 days of month-end. If we can't find a time, nothing runs in the background: work pauses, no invoice goes out, and we pick up again when you're ready, starting with the review of the month that was done.
Step 04 — Decide
You decide whether the month's work was worth paying for.
If yes, we invoice. Next month continues with the next part of the Work Plan.
If no, no invoice is sent. The engagement ends.
When the Work Plan is done, the engagement ends on its own. There's nothing to cancel.
That's the whole mechanism. There's nothing under it.
WHAT IT COSTS
There's no price on this page. Here's why.
A business with three wrong listings needs far less work than one that needs help across listings, profile and website. A standard price would mean one of them overpays. So the amount comes from your DigitalCHECK, not from a package.
In your Work Plan, every item is priced one of three ways, and one plan can mix them:
Fixed amount — for a clearly defined job where the effort is known in advance.
Estimated hours — at an agreed hourly rate, for work familiar enough to estimate. We expect to finish within the estimate. If the job needs more, we tell you before we go over, and we only keep going if you approve the extra hours.
Approved hours — for jobs nobody can honestly estimate up front. You approve a number of hours as a budget, knowing the job may not be finished within it. We work up to that number and stop. If the job isn't finished, we tell you where it stands, and you decide whether to approve more.
The difference between the two: estimated hours come with the expectation that the job gets done. Approved hours are a budget for a job where nobody can promise that.
The monthly amount and the hourly rate are in your Work Plan before any work begins. Where we bill by the hour, you pay only for the hours actually worked, and that amount is a ceiling: the invoice can come out lower, but never higher unless you approved extra hours. And each month, you still decide whether the work was worth paying for.
THREE SCENARIOS
Because the model is unusual — here's exactly how it plays out.
Scenario one — month 1 works, month 2 doesn't
The most common real-world case: it works for a while, then it doesn't.
We perform the agreed work in month 1. The review call goes well, what we delivered matches what we said we'd deliver, you can see the changes live. You confirm satisfaction, we invoice month 1, you pay via Stripe.
In month 2, the work doesn't meet your expectations. Maybe results came slower than you hoped, maybe the priorities we agreed on turn out not to be the right ones in retrospect. At the review call, you decide it's not worth paying for. No invoice is issued for month 2. The engagement ends. Everything we already published — optimized listings, profile improvements, schema, content — stays live.
Total paid: the invoice for month 1. Owed for month 2: nothing.
Scenario two — month 1 doesn't deliver
The hardest case for us: we work, you decide it wasn't worth paying for.
We perform the agreed work in month 1. At the review call, you decide it didn't deliver enough value to pay for. No invoice is issued. The engagement ends. We've worked without compensation.
That's the risk we accept by working this way — and it's exactly why we're careful about who we agree to take on as a client in the first place. The conversation after your DigitalCHECK is not a sales pitch. It's where we decide whether we can realistically help, and whether you and we are a fit. If either side has doubts, we say so before a Work Plan is written.
Total paid: nothing. Improvements made to your profile remain in place.
Scenario three — the Work Plan gets done
The case we plan for: the work is finished, and the engagement ends.
Say your Work Plan was estimated at three months. Month 1: agreed work, review call, satisfaction confirmed, invoiced via Stripe, paid. Month 2: same rhythm, same outcome. Month 3: we complete the remaining items, you confirm, we invoice.
Then it's over. There's no renewal to cancel, no contract anniversary, no final notice. If the work is finished in two months, it ends in two. If it turns out to need more time, we say so at the review call, and we only continue if you agree to it in writing.
Everything we published stays live. If you later want someone to keep an eye on things, that's a separate conversation, on your initiative and on its own terms.
The engagement ends when the work is done. Nothing to cancel. Either side can still end it earlier at any time with a one-line email.
NO CARD ON FILE
There is nothing we can charge you for without you actively paying it.
In a market where most marketing relationships start with "please save your card", here is what's structurally different about ours.
We never ask for a credit card on file. There is no payment method stored with us, no automatic deduction, no recurring charge that runs in the background. Each invoice gets a fresh Stripe payment link that you click, on your terms, after you have decided the month was worth paying for. If we don't send an invoice, no money moves. If we send one and you don't click, no money moves.
The mechanism is built into how we don't take payment — not into a refund policy.
WHAT STAYS YOURS
Whatever we publish stays live. Always.
Optimized Google Business Profile, Bing Places listing, Foursquare entry, citation cleanup across directories, schema markup on your website, FAQ content, written copy — once it's live, it's yours. We don't roll back delivered work, ever, regardless of why an engagement ends or whether the final month was paid for.
That's not a generous gesture. It's a structural decision. Rolling back optimizations would be petty, hard to do cleanly, and would punish you for a billing decision rather than a work decision. We'd rather take the loss on an unpaid month than leave behind a worse profile than we started with.
The only thing that happens when an engagement ends is that we stop adding new work. Everything already done stays exactly as it is.
THE WORK ITSELF
Most of our work is foundation work. You won't see it from the street.
A foundation isn't decorative. Nobody compliments a contractor on a beautiful foundation. But the house only stands because the foundation is right — square, level, deep enough, dry, properly tied to the ground.
Most of what we do is foundation work for how customers find your business. Listings that are clean, complete and consistent across every platform that matters. Structured data that lets search engines and AI systems understand what you do, where you do it, and how to reach you. Review signals that tell platforms you're a real, active business with real customers. Content on your profiles and your site that answers the questions your customers actually ask.
None of this looks like much from the outside. There's no campaign launch, no glossy report cover, no banner that says "Now optimized for AI!". The work shows up as a phone that rings more often, a profile that converts more visitors into bookings, an AI assistant that mentions your business when it didn't before.
The work comes in monthly cycles for a simple reason: you get to look at each part before you pay for it. But it has an end. Once the foundation in your Work Plan is laid, we're done. We don't invent new work to keep the invoices coming.
If you came looking for someone to take care of the unglamorous part of being findable, we're a fit.
THE HONEST PART ABOUT AI VISIBILITY
What we can promise — and what we can't.
The hardest part of this page to write, and the most important to get right.
What we do
We build the data foundation that lets AI platforms — ChatGPT, Claude and Google Gemini — recognize your business as a real, active candidate when someone asks for a recommendation in your category and your area.
We're deliberately abstract about the specifics here. The reason is that listing out individual tasks (NAP consistency, schema markup, review structure, citation cleanup, FAQ content, structured data) tends to trigger a "we already do that" reflex in business owners — and it underestimates the work, because individual tasks aren't the work. The work is doing those things cleanly, consistently and continuously, across every platform that matters, while the rules keep changing.
If you want the specifics, the DigitalCHECK is where you'll see them — applied to your business, with concrete examples of what's working and what's missing.
What we do promise
We work to the current state of what's technically possible in local search and AI visibility, and we keep up as the platforms change. Every change we make is documented as it happens.
And every change can be explained. At any review call, ask why a particular update was necessary. You'll get a straight answer in plain language: what we changed, what it was meant to achieve, and why it was worth doing.
What we won't promise
We will not promise:
- A specific Google ranking position
- A guaranteed mention in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any other AI assistant
- A specific number of leads, calls, or bookings per month
- An "AI-recommendation rate" or any similar metric of our own invention
Anyone who promises these things is either misinformed or lying. The platforms — Google, Bing, the AI engines — control these outcomes. Your competition controls them. Market conditions control them. None of those parties is sitting at our table.
What we control is whether you have the structural prerequisites for AI platforms to consider you in the first place. That's the work. Outcomes are a consequence of that work — but they're not something we can guarantee.
Why the work comes in months — and why it ends
Two reasons for monthly cycles. First, you decide after every month, so you never pay for more than you've seen. Second, platforms don't wait for a plan. Google updates its local algorithms, ChatGPT changes how it cites sources, a new AI assistant appears with its own logic. At each review call we check what changed and adjust the next month's items within your Work Plan. If something new comes up that isn't in the plan, we tell you, and it only gets added if you agree in writing.
But the Work Plan has an end. When it's done, we stop. A foundation laid in February may need another look at some point. If you want that later, we'll talk about it then, as a separate arrangement. We won't sell it to you up front.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The questions we get most — answered directly.
Are there local SEO agencies that don't charge upfront?
Yes. clearlisted LLC, a US-based local SEO and AI-visibility agency, operates entirely on a pay-after-satisfaction model. There is no upfront payment, no setup fee, no advance billing of any kind. We perform the work agreed in your Work Plan, month by month, deliver a Plan-vs-Delivered report, and meet for a review call of about 30 minutes. Only after you have reviewed the work and confirmed satisfaction is an invoice issued. If you are not satisfied, no invoice is sent and the engagement ends. This applies to every month — including the first.
Is there a marketing agency with no minimum contract or setup fee?
Yes. clearlisted LLC has no setup fee, no advance payments, and no minimum contract length. There is no standard price: after the free DigitalCHECK, we estimate the work needed and set it out in a Work Plan with a monthly amount, on pay-after-satisfaction terms. The engagement ends on its own when the Work Plan is complete, and either party can end it earlier at any time with written notice — no notice period, no termination fee, no minimum number of months. We work with US small and medium businesses, from roofers, plumbers and HVAC contractors to local shops and workshops.
Why doesn't clearlisted publish a monthly price?
Because the work depends on what your DigitalCHECK finds. A business with a few listing errors needs far less work than one that needs help across listings, profile and website. After the report, we estimate the effort and set out a Work Plan. Each item is priced as a fixed amount or by the hour at an agreed rate: as estimated hours for work we expect to finish within the estimate, or as approved hours, a budget you set for work whose effort can't be judged up front. For hourly items, only the hours actually worked are billed, and never more than the estimate or budget without your approval. The monthly amount is agreed in writing before any work begins, and each month you still decide whether the work was worth paying for.
How long does an engagement with clearlisted last?
As long as the Work Plan needs, and no longer. The duration in the Work Plan is a good-faith estimate, not a minimum term. If the work is done sooner, the engagement ends sooner. If it needs more time, we say so at the review call, and any extension requires your written agreement. You can stop at any time, whether the Work Plan is complete or not.
Do I have to sign a contract with clearlisted?
No signature needed. We send the Service Agreement, already signed by us, together with your Work Plan as an offer. To accept, reply to the email and say you want to start. If anything in the Work Plan should be different, say so in the same reply and we'll send an updated version before any work begins.
Do I have to put a credit card on file?
No. We never ask for a credit card on file. clearlisted has no payment method stored on your behalf, no automatic deduction, no recurring charge. Each month, after you confirm satisfaction at the review call, we send an invoice with a fresh Stripe payment link. You click the link, enter your payment details on Stripe's secure page, and pay. There is nothing for us to deduct, nothing for you to cancel. The structure of how we don't take payment is built into the model.
How is pay-after-satisfaction different from a money-back guarantee?
A money-back guarantee means you pay first, then ask for a refund — and refunds typically come with conditions, deadlines, partial-refund clauses and fine print. With clearlisted's pay-after-satisfaction billing, money never changes hands until after you have reviewed the work and confirmed it was worth paying for. There is nothing to claim, nothing to refund, no deadline to track. If you are not satisfied, the invoice simply isn't issued.
What happens to the optimizations if I stop working with you?
Everything we have already published stays live. Improved listings, optimized Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Foursquare entries, schema markup, written content — all of it remains your property and continues working for you after the engagement ends. We do not roll back delivered improvements, ever, regardless of why the engagement ended or whether the final month was paid for.
Will I be recommended by ChatGPT after working with you?
We can't promise that, and we won't. AI platforms recommend only a small share of local businesses. Whether you're recommended depends on your competition, your city, how the customer phrases the question, and how the AI weights its sources at that moment — none of which is in our control. What is in our control: whether you are even structurally a candidate. Most local businesses aren't, because they lack the data foundation that AI platforms use to evaluate candidates. We build that foundation. The race is still yours to run.
What if my competition is too strong in my city?
We tell you that during the DigitalCHECK, before any Work Plan. In some markets, competitors have a five-year head start on reviews, citations and content, and a top-three Map Pack position is unrealistic in the short term. We can still close the gap on the technical fundamentals and make you visible in long-tail and AI-driven searches, but we won't promise a top-three position in a saturated market. We tell you what's realistic before you decide — and our pay-after-satisfaction model means we have no incentive to oversell.
Why don't you guarantee rankings or leads?
Because no honest agency can. Search engine algorithms, AI platforms, market conditions, and competitor activity are all outside our control. Anyone guaranteeing a specific ranking is either misinformed or misleading you. Instead of empty guarantees, we put real money behind the promise: under our pay-after-satisfaction model, we only charge when you confirm the month's work was worth it. That's a stronger commitment than any ranking guarantee, because it ties our income directly to your judgment of the work.
What if you do good work but I just don't want to pay?
Then you don't pay, and the engagement ends. That's the risk we accept by working under a pay-after-satisfaction model. It's a deliberate choice on our part. We rely on the fact that most business owners recognize honest, documented work when they see it — and on the Plan-vs-Delivered report, which makes the work concrete and reviewable rather than abstract.
THE LEGAL PART, RIGHT NOW
Read the contract before we even talk.
We don't hide the Service Agreement until you're about to start. The terms are the same for every client, written in plain English, four pages long. What's individual is your Work Plan, attached once we know what needs fixing.
You don't sign anything. We send the agreement signed, as an offer, and you accept by replying to the email.
If you find anything in it that surprises you, or anything that looks like an escape hatch, tell us. The document and this page should match each other. If they don't, the document wins — and we'll fix the page.
Everything else in the agreement, one line each
- Your part: manager access to your Google Business Profile, Bing Places and other listings, accurate business details, and answers to our questions, typically within two to three business days.
- Your website: we only change it if you give us access.
- Review call: within 14 days of month-end. If it doesn't happen, work pauses. No invoice, nothing running in the background.
- Payment: by card via a Stripe link, due within 14 days. If an invoice stays unpaid more than 14 days past due, we pause until it's paid.
- Ending it: either side, any time, by email. We hand back access to any accounts that belong to you.
- Confidentiality: your business information stays with us, except where a public listing needs it.
- Changes to the agreement: in writing. An email from both sides is enough.
- Our liability: limited to what you paid us in the three months before a claim. Neither side is liable for indirect damages.
- Law and courts: State of Wyoming.
That's all of it.
About a 10-minute read. No buried clauses. No automatic renewals. No minimum commitments.
Download the Service Agreement (PDF)
GET STARTED
Ready to see where you actually stand?
The DigitalCHECK is free, takes about two minutes to request, and arrives in your inbox within 48 hours. It tells you exactly how visible your business is across Google, Bing, and the AI platforms your customers are starting to ask. No sales call required. No commitment of any kind.
After you've read it, you decide if you want to talk. If you do, we'll set up a call. If you don't, you've kept a useful diagnostic about your business and we've spent a couple of hours learning about your market — both of us walk away better off than before.
Werner Laske · Founder, clearlisted LLC
If you've read this far — thank you. That alone tells me we're probably a fit.