Blog Post Playbook

The whole post.
No website to connect

Three blog opportunities your business is placed to win, scored, each naming the page it would beat. Keep one and it comes back researched, sourced and illustrated on a page you open and copy straight into whatever you publish with.

35 credits~6–10 minutesOne decision from youNothing to connect
What it proposes

It names the page it would beat

The run stops halfway. Three scored opportunities, each carrying the asset you own that the ranking pages don't. Delete two, rewrite the angle of the one you keep: the writer follows your line exactly. Nothing expensive runs until you have.

Best fit86

Why most agencies mis-price retainers

Your edit

Angle: retainers fail on scope creep, not on the rate, and we have the timesheet data to show where it starts

Primary term: agency retainer pricing

Search intent: commercial

Why we win it: three years of our own retainer data; the ranking pages have none

Research: 6 sourced figures · 3 examples · 2 quotes · counter-evidence

The page it would beat

Two listicles, neither showing a single real number.

Option 271

What changed when we cut the kickoff call

Angle: the ritual everyone defends, removed, and what it cost us to find out

Primary term: client kickoff process

Search intent: problem-solution

Why we win it: a first-person account nobody ranking has

Research: 4 sourced figures · 2 examples · 1 quote · counter-evidence

The page it would beat

Template posts: all advice, no evidence.

Option 364

The scope document that ends arguments

Angle: a real scope doc, annotated, with the clauses that stopped the fights

Primary term: agency scope of work

Search intent: informational

Why we win it: we can publish the actual document

Research: 3 sourced figures · 4 examples · counter-evidence

The page it would beat

Generic templates behind email walls.

The score is editorial judgement: fit with your proof, the size of the gap, how close the reader is to buying. It is never a search volume or a difficulty rating: Jasify has no data source for those, so a number there would be invented.

The part nobody advertises

What it refuses to write

Every tool tells you what its AI produces. This is what this one will not produce, enforced in the workflow, not promised in the marketing.

A statistic with no source

Every figure carries the URL it came from. After writing, the same worker re-reads its own draft and checks each one against the research, claim by claim, cutting anything that isn't there.

An internal link that doesn't exist

It links only to URLs that appeared in your own site context. If it has none, it adds none, rather than guessing a path that looks right.

A gap smoothed over

Anything your Brain doesn't hold is left as a marked blank, listed under 'Before you publish' so you cannot paste past it by accident.

The real output

The finished post, ready to paste

Not an outline and not a content brief. The finished article itself, waiting in your workspace: both images already in place, sources linked, and every field a blog post needs listed underneath. One click carries the whole thing, pictures included, into whatever you write in.

Your finished post
Copy & paste
Banner · art-directed from your angle

Why most agencies mis-price retainers

The rate is almost never the problem. Scope creep is, and it starts in week three. Here is where we watched it happen across three years of our own retainers.

If you're re-pricing a retainer that keeps losing money, the answer is usually not a higher rate. It's the four hours a month nobody agreed to. We went back through 38 months of our own retainers and the pattern was the same every time.

Scope creep doesn't arrive, it accumulates

Agencies bill an average of 62% of the hours they work, and the gap is almost never one big unbilled project. In our own numbers it was requests under 40 minutes, the ones too small to raise, arriving twice a week, for eleven months.

Body image · placed at a section break
Before you publish
[NEEDS: the median overrun figure from the 2024 cohort]: left blank on purpose. Your Brain didn't hold it, so nothing was invented to fill the sentence, and it's listed here so you don't paste past it.
Publishing details
Title
Why most agencies mis-price retainers
Slug
agency-retainer-pricing
Meta title
Why agencies mis-price retainers (and the fix)
Meta description
Scope creep, not your rate, is what makes a retainer lose money. Here's where it starts.
Tags
pricing, agency ops, retainers
How it runs

Two halves, and you choose in the middle

The research happens first, on all three angles, so you are choosing between things that have already been checked out rather than between three headlines. Then nothing else runs until you've picked one, which is the single judgement a person is genuinely better at.

Act 1: decide

Find the angle

Reads your site out of the Company Brain, reads what currently ranks in your niche, and proposes three scored opportunities, each one already researched, with its own figures and sources attached.

~18 credits · 3 steps
Your turn

About 30 seconds

Delete two. Rewrite one line. Approve.

Act 2: write

Write it and hand it over

Art-directs a banner from your angle, writes the post in your voice, edits its own draft and fact-checks every number against the research it was given, illustrates the article itself, and hands the whole thing back, pictures already in place. Then, if you've connected WordPress, it files the same post there as a draft.

~17 credits · 5 steps
All 9 stepsCompany Brain · Data Extractor · Angles & Research · Review · Banner Image · Blog Writer & Editor · In-Article Image 1 · Ready-to-Paste Post · Publish to WordPress

Two images: a wide banner and one placed inside the article at a section break. The banner is art-directed from the angle you approved, the second from the finished article: neither is picked off a stock library, and both are embedded for you, so "Copy with images" carries the whole thing into your editor in one paste.

Before you run it

What it needs from you

Nothing to connect

That is the entire difference. No website to link, no plugin, no endpoint, no permission to grant. The finished post arrives on a page you open and copy out of, so it works with whatever you publish with.

WixSquarespaceSubstackMediumNotionStatic sites

If you do run WordPress, the last step can file the same post there as a draft: you approve Jasify on your own WordPress screen, and there is nothing to paste. Skip it and everything else works exactly the same.

Your website in the Brain

Import it once. That's where the voice, the proof points and your real page URLs come from, and it is the whole difference between a post only you could publish and one anybody could.

Four answers, once

What you do, who reads you, what you can say that competitors can't, and what the blog is for. Two minutes, and every future run uses them.

Runs weekly from your first launch onward: Monday morning, three fresh angles waiting. Ignore them and nothing is spent past the gate.