Not all boutique agencies are client-facing. Some almost exclusively serve other agencies on a white-label basis.
I do a fair amount of white-label work myself, and like any business model — there are really really great things about it (collaboration, namely!) and some pitfalls (lack of control!).
I was so curious to explore the nooks of Natasha Golinsky’s white-label web development agency and see what it would look like to go full agency partner.
Natasha has scaled up into a team of web development experts who step into other agency workflows when web projects need more expertise or bandwidth than they have in-house.
Keep reading for the full interview with Natasha, founder of On Purpose Projects.
Krista: How did you get to this place of white-label-forward as an agency?
Natasha: As my career kind of evolved, I really liked seeking out agency community, specifically female agencies.
And when it came time to automations, integrations, migrations, e-com, API — there wasn’t really anybody who did that. My colleagues started coming to me for stuff like, “Oh hey, I heard you do this. Do you do this? We have this client with this broken whatever. Could you take a look at it?” And I just kind of evolved from there.
And then probably after two years of doing it that way, I’m like, no — I’m gonna own this lane. I’m just gonna lean in, really singularly own this positioning. I never set out to do it that way. It just sort of evolved that there were not a lot of, if any, female-founded dev agencies that did what I do.
Krista: So how did that shift go? You made the decision to lean in — how has it gone?
Natasha: There are pros and cons. I like it better because there’s more repeat business. If you have an agency partnership and they really like how you do the work, it’s a very high probability they’re going to continue to send you work without you having to go get that new client. So it’s kind of like you’re going after the apple tree as opposed to the apple.
The downside of working white label is that a lot of times you have no control over the client relationship. We’ve had it happen where, unless the agency client knows what to do and how to communicate the work that we do, the project can go really sideways — because they don’t know how to communicate custom dev, which is why they hired us.
Krista: It sounds like you’re helping agencies add a service or capacity — filling a gap they don’t have — versus being an extra pair of hands for an existing service line. So that agency owner doesn’t have a process around your thing, doesn’t know what to ask, doesn’t know how to scope it. So you can totally do that, but you have to charge for that educational labor too, right?
Natasha: Yeah, totally. That’s got to have happened many times over the last however many years of working white label. We get brought in, nobody has a clue what we do.
Let’s say we’re working on Shopify and they’ve been a WooCommerce team — Shopify is a very different animal. There’s a lot of education that has to happen. But the advantage of being a very complicated service is that we can help our clients make more money because of what we help them provide.
Krista: How have you structured your services and processes to make the project go smoothly — especially since you’re working with those agency owners who can’t do what you do and may not have a process around it?
Natasha: I always say, bring us in early. Bring us in during discovery, scoping — if you get an inkling on a lead, talk to us first. We will tell you how to present the technical piece. We’ll write your emails, send you the scoping questionnaires, tell you what to say.
We have our own processes on the back end that, after 10 years in the industry doing one service, are really dialed in. We try to be really rigid about that — there’s a reason for these 10 questions as opposed to four.
One of the things we’re working on right now is a “web project manager boot camp,” where we train our agency clients on how to manage their side of the dev project. Because the job goes so badly if they don’t know what they’re doing, through no fault of their own.
Krista: How do you think about pricing from a white label standpoint — do you think about what the end client is paying, or is it just “here’s our rate, you figure it out”?
Natasha: I never really know what a project was sold for. The agency is welcome to mark us up however they want. I know what a standard rate is for white label work. Our quality is there.
I actually have two totally different prices depending on client management. White label project management is one of the hardest parts — the chasing, getting files, getting logins, all the meetings. If I don’t have to do that and we’re just executing, it’s significantly less. But what my clients sell it for, I never really know. I just make sure that my costs are covered and that it’s profitable on my end, and then I don’t worry about what they do with it.
Krista: What do you look for that makes somebody a good fit to pitch services to — beyond being able to afford your rates?
Natasha: Most of my agency partners have at least six employees, so they’re probably at least over the half a million dollar revenue mark already, which tells me they work with clients who also make money and can afford custom dev (which is what we’d be doing).
I look for agencies that are more established, incorporated, have a portfolio — more of a corporate lean. And the clientele matters too. If they’re mostly working with solopreneurs, from a tech standpoint, that doesn’t usually translate to the kind of budgets we need.
Krista: Does the white label model feel stable, or is there a sense of unpredictability because you’re relying on other people’s pipelines?
Natasha: I personally love networking and building new partnerships. I kind of keep it as a revolving door. Sometimes people need you only for a run of projects — they sold a lot of things and then you don’t hear from them for a year. So I don’t look at any one particular client to be my revenue.
We have a lot of clients who all fire at different times. Our Q4 was so crazy — we had six launches in December. January has been kind of nice and slower. So I’m always looking for more partners and building out. The stability comes from multiple projects running at the same time, and my job is to keep that pipeline full.
We’re very project-based. We’re usually brought in with “Hey, how much to build this?” — fixed price, it’s sold. I know some white label agencies are really heavy on retainers and won’t take you if you’re not on retainer. I don’t love that philosophy. Not everybody needs that. I don’t think it’s ethical to sell something that people are paying for but not using.
Krista: What types of services do you think really lend themselves to white label?
Natasha: A lot of content people — people who do content marketing — do a lot of white label work. If you’re an SEO agency, you probably need writers all the time. In the tech world, there are certain types of agencies that go hand in hand. Google Ads and Facebook Ads will sometimes work together — your agency may only do Google Ads, so you white label the Facebook side. For us, it’s design and dev — we usually get brought in when someone has the design handled but not the tech.
If I were to start my agency over, I might be more conscious to choose a service that is consumable on an ongoing basis — so that you could have that predictability in your revenue.
Krista: Let’s say somebody has an agency or is a service pro, they’re doing a lot of direct client work, and they’re thinking about going the white label route. Where do they start?
Natasha: I would try it out first. You might hate it — you might hate that loss of control. You are not responsible for the client experience, but you take the fall. If your client’s project manager does a bad job and the end client has a bad experience, you’re probably going to lose that agency client. The agency client isn’t always cognizant enough to realize who actually messed up. When you’re working B2C, you’re in control of the process — it’s much easier to fix things. When you’re working white label, you’re kind of stuck inside someone else’s dysfunction.
So try it once or twice, see if you like being in that loss of control. Then, if you want to do it: make sure your own process is really dialed in, so you can’t get pushed around by your client. If you know something works better a certain way — because you’ve been doing it for 10 years — have the courage to say, “Hey, I appreciate that suggestion, but we do it like this.” You have to be really strong in enforcing your own standards. You’ve also got to know how to navigate the politics — be flexible enough to roll within someone else’s system, but at the same time know exactly what your non-negotiables are.
Krista: What are your non-negotiables when working white label?
Natasha: Number one – do not sell it without talking to us first. That one just creates chaos every time.
Payment is another huge one. We get paid at very specific milestones. We stop working if you don’t pay us within a certain time frame — I don’t care if your client paid you or not, this is our contract.
And as much as possible — training our agency clients on how to respect the process. You brought us in because you don’t know how to do this piece. A lot of our role is instructional, but you need to give us the benefit of the doubt and not be defensive when things come up. Respecting the process, giving us what we need in the format we need it — that’s non-negotiable.
Krista: To be successful as a white label agency, you’d think what you need is to be really flexible to all these different processes — because that’s your role. But it sounds like you’re saying almost the opposite — they’re gonna have their process, but you also need to have a really rigid one.
Natasha: You have to know what you’re doing and why you do it the way that you do it. Because ultimately, they’re bringing you in as the expert. They’re assuming you know what you are doing. And you do. So advocate for it.
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Massive thanks to Natasha for sharing her experience so candidly. Connect with her on LinkedIn or visit her site to learn more about her work.
xoxo, your favorite website freak,
Krista
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