In-house, freelancer or done-for-you for AI search: how to choose
By Roshan, founder of SearchMaxx - - updated - 8 min read
Hire in-house if AI search will be a core channel for years and you already have people who can review and ship website changes. Use a freelancer for a defined project with a clear end, like a technical fix or a set of comparison pages. Use a done-for-you service when nobody on your team owns this work and you want steady output without managing it.
The rest of this post compares the three on cost, speed, control, risk and what each needs from you, so you can check that answer against your own situation.
What the work actually is
Before you pick who does it, be clear on what "AI search" work means. For most software companies it comes down to five jobs:
- Let the engines read your site. Allow the AI search crawlers in robots.txt and your firewall, and send real text in the HTML. See which AI crawlers to allow and how to see what they see.
- Publish pages that answer buyer questions. "Best X for Y", "X vs Y", "X alternatives", pricing, and use-case pages. See how to write comparison pages AI assistants cite.
- Keep facts current. Prices, features and integrations change. Stale pages get quoted wrong.
- Get mentioned on other sites. Reviews, directories, communities and articles that name you.
- Measure. Ask the engines your buyers' questions on a schedule and count how often you are named. See how to track AI mentions for free.
Some of this is engineering, some is writing, some is research. That mix is why the "who" question is hard.
The comparison at a glance
| Factor | In-house hire | Freelancer | Done-for-you service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | A full salary plus benefits (see below) | Hourly or per project. Varies widely | A fixed monthly or yearly fee |
| Time to first change | Slowest. You hire, then they ramp up | Fast once scoped | Fast. The service has a process already |
| Control | Highest. They sit in your team | Medium. You set scope, they choose methods | Lower day to day. You approve what ships |
| Main risk | A bad hire, or one person leaving with the knowledge | Scope gaps and work that stops when the project ends | Generic work that does not fit your product |
| Needs from you | A manager, a budget line, review time | A clear brief and someone to review | Site access, product context, fast approvals |
| Best for | AI search as a long-term core channel | One defined project | No owner on your team, steady output wanted |
Cost
In-house
There is no government job category called "AI search specialist", so use the nearest roles. US Bureau of Labor Statistics medians for May 2025:
| Role | Median annual pay | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Market research analyst | $78,760 | BLS |
| Web developer | $92,650 | BLS |
| Marketing manager | $166,790 | BLS |
Salary is not the full cost. In June 2026, wages made up 70.0% of what US private employers spent on compensation, and benefits made up the other 30.0% (BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation). Divide a salary by 0.7 for a rough total. A $78,760 salary works out to about $112,500 a year in compensation cost, before recruiting fees, tools and management time.
Medians are midpoints. Pay in your city and for someone with direct AI search experience may be higher or lower.
Freelancer
We could not find a published, dated survey of freelance AI search rates that we trust, so we will not quote one. Rates vary by experience, region and scope. The practical move is to write one brief and get three quotes. Ask each freelancer for a fixed price per deliverable, not just an hourly rate, so you can compare like with like.
Done-for-you service
Services usually charge a fixed fee per month or year. The questions that matter are what you get for the fee and what happens when you stop paying. As one example of the model, SearchMaxx charges $1,000 a month, $2,777 for a 12-week activation, or $10,000 a year. It ships one change a day to the client's site as a pull request, a person checks each one, and it does not promise rankings.
Whatever service you look at, ask for the price in writing, the minimum term, and a list of what ships each week.
Speed
Speed here means how soon useful changes reach your live site.
- In-house is slowest to start. You write a job description, interview, hire, and wait for the new person to learn your product and codebase. Once they are up to speed, they can be the fastest of the three, because they need no outside approvals.
- A freelancer can start within days if your brief is clear. Each new project restarts the clock, because they have to relearn what changed.
- A done-for-you service starts quickly because the process already exists. Its speed then depends on you. A service that sends pull requests is only as fast as the person who merges them.
In every model, a change only counts once it is live. A page that sits unapproved for two weeks does nothing, so plan who reviews before you pick who writes.
Control
- In-house gives you the most control. You set priorities every week and can redirect work the same day.
- A freelancer gives you control over scope and deliverables. You have less say in how they do the work, and they may have other clients competing for their time.
- A done-for-you service gives you control at the approval step. You see each change before it goes live, but the service decides what to propose. If that worries you, ask how they choose what to work on and whether you can steer it.
A simple test for any option: can you see every change before it goes live, and can you undo it? If the answer to either is no, walk away.
Risk
Each model fails in a different way.
| Model | How it usually goes wrong | How to reduce the risk |
|---|---|---|
| In-house | You hire someone who is good at classic SEO but new to AI search, or they leave and take the know-how with them | Ask for work samples with measurable results. Make them document their process and keep the prompt list in a shared place |
| Freelancer | The brief misses something, or the work stops when the project ends and nobody keeps the pages current | Write the brief around outcomes, and agree who updates the pages after handover |
| Done-for-you | The service runs the same playbook for everyone, and your pages sound generic | Give them real product detail, customer language and sales objections. Read the first week of changes closely |
Two risks apply to all three. First, nobody can guarantee what an AI engine says. Treat any promise of a ranking or a fixed number of mentions as a warning sign. Second, AI answers vary from one run to the next, so judge results on trends over weeks, not one screenshot.
What each needs from you
This is the part buyers often underestimate.
In-house hire
- A manager who understands the goal and can judge the work.
- Access to the website code or CMS, analytics and Search Console.
- A budget line for at least a year, since the first months are mostly hiring and ramp-up.
Freelancer
- A written brief with the goal, the pages in scope and the deadline.
- One person who reviews drafts and answers product questions within a day or two.
- A plan for who maintains the work after the project ends.
Done-for-you service
- Access to wherever your site lives. Some services work in your code repository, some in your CMS.
- A short call or doc on your product, your buyers and your competitors.
- Someone who approves changes quickly. A few minutes a day is often enough.
When in-house is the better choice
Hire in-house if most of these are true:
- AI search and organic search are, or will be, one of your top two or three acquisition channels.
- You have a large site, many products, or many markets, so there is more than one person's worth of work.
- Your industry needs tight legal or compliance review, and an insider will move faster through it.
- You can afford a full salary for at least a year and have someone to manage the hire.
- You want the knowledge to stay inside the company.
If that is you, a done-for-you service or freelancer can still help in the first few months while you hire. Make sure everything they build lives in your systems, so the new hire can pick it up.
When a freelancer is the better choice
- You have one clear project, such as fixing crawler access, rebuilding pricing pages, or writing a set of comparison pages.
- You have an internal owner who can keep things going after the project ends.
- You want to test the channel before you commit to a monthly cost.
When a done-for-you service is the better choice
- Nobody on your team owns AI search, and nobody will in the next six months.
- You are a small team where engineers and marketers are fully booked.
- You want a steady pace of changes and a regular report, without managing a person.
- You are comfortable reviewing changes others propose.
Questions to ask any option
Use these whether you are interviewing a candidate, a freelancer or a service:
- What will you change in the first two weeks, specifically?
- How do you measure whether AI engines mention us, and how often do you report?
- Who checks each change before it goes live?
- Do you promise rankings? (The honest answer is no.)
- If we stop working together, what do we keep?
- Can you show results from past work, with the source of the numbers?
Where to start
Whichever route you choose, start by checking that AI engines can read your site at all. Our free check shows in about 10 seconds whether the AI search crawlers can fetch your pages and how much text they see. If you want to see what this work looks like with real numbers, read the case study.
Want this done for your site?
Every day we make one change to your website that helps AI engines name you, and a person checks each one. Email me your website and the question your buyers ask AI.