Do-it-yourself game plans · No. 15 / 22
What will DIY AI search visibility cost?
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Separate cash outlay from internal labour. A low subscription price does not make the research, approvals and implementation free.
What do published monitoring prices look like?
These are examples from supplier pricing pages checked for this research, not endorsements or a comprehensive comparison. Confirm checkout terms, taxes, engine coverage, exports and collection methods before buying.
| Published option | Listed price | Relevant scope or qualification |
|---|---|---|
| OtterlyAI Lite | $29/month, monthly billing | 15 prompts; below this guide’s 24-prompt panel. (otterly.ai) |
| OtterlyAI Standard | $189/month, monthly billing | 100 prompts; the page lists ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. (otterly.ai) |
| OtterlyAI Standard: Google AI Mode add-on | $59/month extra | Combined illustrative subscription cost: $248/month before tax. (otterly.ai) |
| Scrunch Starter | $300 month-to-month, or $250/month billed annually | Published scope includes 350 custom prompts and three user licences. Check the complete collection specification. (scrunch.com) |
Three months at $248/month is $744. Scrunch’s month-to-month example is $900 for three months; its $250 annual-billing headline implies $3,000 for a full year, not a $750 quarterly commitment. These are arithmetic comparisons, not equivalent-service claims. (otterly.ai)
What internal effort should you budget?
For the proposed 864-observation programme, an assumed 3–5 minutes per observation for manual capture and first-pass scoring yields 43.2–72 hours before broader analysis, implementation and approvals. Time your own process: long answers and difficult accuracy checks may take longer.
Below is a worked planning scenario, not a salary survey, quotation or observed market average.
| Resource | Assumed hours | Assumed loaded hourly cost | Illustrative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Programme owner | 16 | $100 | $1,600 |
| Research/SEO analyst | 80 | $75 | $6,000 |
| Product/content editor | 40 | $85 | $3,400 |
| Web developer | 24 | $125 | $3,000 |
| Marketing operations | 12 | $90 | $1,080 |
| Specialist factual/legal review | 8 | $100 | $800 |
| Internal total | 180 | — | $15,880 |
| Illustrative three-month monitoring subscription | — | — | $744 |
| Combined economic cost | — | — | $16,624 |
This scenario reserves analyst capacity even if a tool reduces manual collection. Replace the assumptions with actual time and rates rather than claiming software automatically removes the work.
The model excludes taxes, additional assistant seats, major engineering, paid placements, extensive customer research and remediation outside the four-page content scope. Existing employees may not create equivalent new cash expenditure, but their time still displaces other work.
Which purchase should you make first?
- Unclear whether a problem exists: run the small manual diagnostic.
- Clear problem, insufficient repeat collection: evaluate monitoring software.
- Confirmed access issue: commission a bounded technical fix.
- Missing or contradictory buying facts: allocate product-marketing and editorial time.
- Identified external factual errors: use targeted correction outreach.
- High-stakes performance claim: obtain independent measurement review.
Do not buy an agency retainer merely because a dashboard shows a low score.
Sources cited on this page
- otterly.ai otterly.ai/pricing/
- scrunch.com scrunch.com/pricing