Straight Answers.
Sixty-three questions across eight sections: services, pricing, timelines, ownership and policies. If it is not here, ask, and we will answer straight rather than route you to a call.
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The basics
11 questions
What does Black Tiger Digital actually do?
We build websites that generate leads and the system behind them, capture on every channel, source attribution, follow-up and reporting. A website waits. An engine works. The goal is more leads, better leads, and a pipeline you can measure.
Who do you work with?
Service businesses where leads matter: home services and trades, healthcare, legal, financial, automotive, personal care, fitness and hospitality. Plus working musicians and bands, which is a separate product called Marquee. The list of who we do not work with is public and specific: read it before you book.
Where are you based, and do you only work locally?
Waterford, Michigan. Most of our work is Oakland County and Metro Detroit because that is where we live, but distance is not the filter, fit is. The map pack ranks your address, not ours, and everything local SEO actually involves, your profile, your citations, your service-area pages, is done from a keyboard regardless of where the keyboard is. We build for businesses outside Michigan regularly and it works the same way. The one real gap is photography, and the fix is hiring a photographer in your own town, which we will tell you exactly what to ask for. Artists are anywhere, no caveats.
What hours do you work?
Monday to Sunday, 9am to 9pm Eastern. Site down is any hour, any day.
How big are you?
Four. Matt Roguske runs it and builds; two contract developers add capacity on heavy months and specialist work; one local SEO specialist does the citation and listing work on Foundation and Growth. Small on purpose, which is why we cap how many builds we start each month and publish the start dates. A shop that takes every project has to quote vague timelines, because it has no idea what next month looks like. More about the four of us.
Do you build on WordPress?
Yes, and in Gutenberg rather than a page builder. It is flexible, genuinely fast when built properly, and, the part that matters to you. It means the site is editable by you afterwards without a license to a builder you have to keep paying for.
Will my site be fast and mobile-friendly?
98+ desktop and 90+ mobile on Google’s own test, and we will run it live on your site during the call so you can see it rather than take our word for it. Speed is budgeted before design starts, which is why the numbers hold after launch instead of being chased afterwards with a caching plugin.
Is the site accessible?
WCAG 2.2 AA is a launch blocker on every build, not something we fix after a complaint. Keyboard operable, 4.5:1 contrast, reflows to 320px. It is also just better for conversion, the things that help a screen reader help a 58-year-old homeowner on a phone in bright sun.
Do you use AI to write my content?
We use it the way you would use a calculator, drafting, outlining, cleaning up structure. We do not publish a page nobody read. Every word on your site gets checked against what you actually do, in the words your customers actually use, and anything we could not verify does not go on the page. If you would rather we did not use it at all, say so and we will not.
Who is responsible for compliance. HIPAA, TCPA, GDPR, all of it?
Split, and we publish exactly where the line sits. We configure the technical safeguards, access controls, encryption in transit, consent capture, opt-out handling, audit trails, the SMS and email plumbing. You own the legal compliance, your policies, your counsel, your consent records, your staff training. Configuring a system correctly is not the same as being compliant, and any vendor who tells you otherwise is selling you a false sense of security.
HIPAA is the exception to the split, because we do not sign business associate agreements and we do not accept protected health information. We can still build a clinic or a practice the whole marketing side, and the clinical side stays in the software that already carries that obligation. The nine categories we decline, the six frameworks that do apply, and what a healthcare build looks like are all in compliance responsibilities. It is worth reading before you hire anyone, including us.
Do you do copywriting, photography and branding?
Messaging and page structure are part of every build. Full copywriting, photography and brand work are add-ons quoted by scope. We will always tell you when real photos of your own work would do more for the site than anything we could write.
Choosing what to build
8 questions
What are the differences between Presence, Foundation and Growth?
They are three levels of one product. Presence ($2,500, 2 weeks) is for a new business nobody can find yet. We build the site, the Google profile and the listings from nothing. Foundation ($5,000, 6 weeks) is for an established business losing to whoever shows up first, full local SEO, multi-channel capture and source attribution, worked every month. Growth ($12,000, 12 weeks) adds paid traffic, lead validation, scoring and automation on top. The full side-by-side is on the Lead Engine page.
How do I know which one I need?
Pick by the problem, not the page count. Nobody can find you Presence. You are found but losing to competitors Foundation. It converts and you want more of it Growth. If you are still unsure, the five-question quiz gives you an answer in ninety seconds without an email address.
What is Marquee?
A separate product for working musicians, bands and artists, $2,000, 3 weeks, $50 a month. Music players, tour dates you manage yourself, a real press kit, merch and contact, on a domain you own. It is not a lead-generation system, because that is not what gets a band booked. See Marquee.
Can I upgrade later?
That is how it is built. Presence to Foundation when you need to rank, Foundation to Growth when the offer is proven and you want volume. You pay the difference in build, not a second build.
Can you work with my existing website instead of rebuilding?
Sometimes, and we will tell you honestly which. If the bones are sound, improving performance, tracking and conversion on what you have is cheaper and faster. If it is a rented builder, an abandoned theme or a five-second load, patching it forever costs more than replacing it. We will look before we answer.
I already paid someone for a rebuild last year. Should I talk to you?
Probably not yet, and we would tell you that on the call. We would spend the first month arguing against a decision you already made and paid for. Fix the tracking and the follow-up on what you have. That is usually the real problem, and call us when the site itself is genuinely the constraint.
Do you work with my industry?
If you run on appointments, bookings or qualified leads, almost certainly. There is a short hard-no list. MLM, crypto and forex, payday lending and debt relief, adult, firearms and ammunition sales, vape and kratom, and anything sold as guaranteed income, and the reasons are mostly mechanical rather than moral: the ad platforms and payment processors will not carry them, so we could not deliver the thing we sell. The full list and the reasoning.
Can you just host my site?
No. Hosting on its own is a commodity and there are companies who do it for $10 a month. Our monthly is care, the security stack, the updates, the monitoring and, from Foundation up, the local SEO work. Paying us purely to keep a site online would be poor value and we would rather say so.
Pricing and payment
10 questions
What does it cost?
Everything is published. Marquee $2,000 build and $50 a month. Presence $2,500 and $250. Foundation $5,000 and $500. Growth $12,000 and $1,000 a month plus 20% of ad spend. Add-ons and build modifiers are listed on the Lead Engine page too. You never need a sales call to find out whether we fit your budget.
Why is the build fee separate from the monthly?
Because they pay for different things. The build fee pays for the work of building, a fixed amount of design, development and setup that happens once. The monthly pays for keeping it fast, secure, updated and, above Presence, actively worked on. Bundling them would mean either overcharging you every month forever, or locking you into a term so we could recover the build. We do neither.
Can I skip the build fee and just pay monthly?
No, and here is the honest reason rather than a policy line. A no-money-down build has to be recovered somewhere, which means a minimum term, an inflated monthly, or a site you do not own until you have paid it off. All three are the website-leasing model we exist in opposition to. The split payment is the compromise: half at kickoff, half at launch.
How do the payment splits work?
Marquee, Presence and Foundation split in two, half at kickoff, half at launch, or on the published launch date, whichever comes first. Growth splits in three, a third at kickoff, a third at day 45, a third at launch, or on the published launch date. Care starts on launch day, not on the day you sign.
Is there a contract or a minimum term?
There is a scope agreement for the build, because both of us need to know what is being built. Care is month to month with 30 days notice. No minimum term, no auto-renewing lock-in.
How does ad spend work?
You pay Google and Meta directly, on your own card, on accounts in your name. We never touch it and we never mark it up. Our management fee is $1,000 plus 20% of what you spend, with support hours scaling from 6 to 16 by spend level. If we are running your ads there is a $3,000 monthly minimum spend, because below that our fee is a bigger share of your budget than the results justify and the platforms do not get enough conversions to learn. That minimum is about the ads, not about Growth. Growth with no ads running is $1,000 a month with no minimum, and you still get the validation, enrichment, scoring and automation layer.
Will you charge me for plugins and licenses?
Tools we run for every client, hosting, the security stack, spam protection, email delivery, are in your monthly with no license fee passed on. Anything bought specifically for your site is billed at cost plus 5%, listed before we buy it. The 5% covers the card and transfer fees on the purchase. Stripe alone is 2.9% plus 30 cents, so it is recovery rather than margin. You will never find a line item you did not approve.
What is your refund policy?
Before kickoff, the deposit is fully refundable, if you change your mind in the first week and no work has started, you get it back. After kickoff, refunds are prorated against work completed, because design and build hours are already spent. Third-party services and ad spend are non-refundable once purchased. If we have genuinely failed to deliver what was scoped, we will make it right rather than hide behind an agreement.
What happens if a payment fails?
We email you, because it is usually an expired card. If it stays unresolved we pause work and services until the balance clears. Nothing gets deleted and nothing gets held hostage, your site and domain remain yours throughout.
How are you different from a $99-a-month website company?
Those are almost always leases. You do not own the site, you cannot take it anywhere, the template is shared with a thousand other businesses, and the monthly never ends because it is the product. Ours is the opposite arrangement: you pay once for the build, you own it outright from day one, and the monthly buys care you can cancel with 30 days notice while keeping everything. If $99 a month is genuinely what your budget supports, take it, just ask them those three questions first.
Timelines and process
9 questions
How long does a build take?
Marquee 3 weeks, Presence 2, Foundation 6, Growth 12, counted from the day your assets land, not the day you pay. That gap is entirely in your hands and it is the single biggest reason a build takes longer than the number on the page.
When can you start?
Published on the production board on the homepage, updated every Monday. We cap intake so the date on the board is the date you get, which also means it can be gone by the time you decide.
Why do you limit how many builds you take?
Because it is the only way a published launch date can be real. When a month fills, the next kickoff date moves publicly rather than quietly in an email to the client who is already waiting.
What do you need from me on day one?
Domain registrar, current hosting, Google Business Profile manager access, Analytics and Search Console, logo files, real photos of your work, your service list, and where leads should go. The full table with the reason for each is on How It Works. Gathering it before kickoff is the best thing you can do for your own launch date.
How many rounds of revisions do I get?
One consolidated round, deliberately generous in scope, a real list, not three notes. If something is genuinely wrong we fix it regardless of the round count. A second full pass because you changed direction is quoted, with the price and the new date, before we start.
What if I miss my asset deadline?
Your launch date moves, because the next build starts on schedule. We set the deadline with you at kickoff, in writing, next to the date it protects, and we send a reminder before it becomes a problem. It is the same discipline that lets us publish start dates at all.
What if you are late?
If the delay is ours, the date holds and we absorb it. That is what the intake cap is for.
Can I watch the progress?
You see the design direction before we build, a check-in at the halfway point, and a private staging link at the end. We do not send daily updates, because writing them costs build hours that come out of your launch date.
Will my rankings survive the migration?
We map every existing URL, redirect it before launch, keep your Search Console history and verify nothing 404s on launch day. Rankings usually dip briefly and recover. Anyone who tells you a migration carries zero risk has not done many.
What the monthly covers
6 questions
What am I actually paying for every month?
Hosting and CDN, SSL, firewall, DDoS and malware monitoring, daily backups with 90-day retention, plugin and core updates that get tested rather than blindly applied, uptime monitoring, license fees for every shared tool, and support. From Foundation up it also covers the local SEO work, citation maintenance, rank tracking and your monthly report. Hosting is one line item inside it, not the whole thing.
How many changes can I ask for?
Presence, one a month up to 20 minutes. Foundation, two a month up to 30 minutes each. Growth, inside your support hours. Beyond that, $350 buys up to two hours scheduled within five business days. Most months you will not need it.
Can I edit the site myself?
Yes, free, forever. Every build ships with a pattern library, so adding a service page or a new section later costs you nothing and does not require us. That is deliberate. We do not want you calling us for a $350 update every time you add a service. An agency that profits from your dependence builds you a site you cannot edit.
What counts as a small change versus a quote?
Small: a phone number, a price, a paragraph, a photo swap, hours, a new staff bio. Quoted: a new section, a layout change, a new integration, a new content type. Anything bigger is priced before the work starts, never after.
Do you guarantee my site will stay online?
We publish a 99.5% uptime commitment, measured monthly, and if we miss it you get a service credit against that month’s fee, applied automatically rather than on request, sliding from 10% up to the whole month depending on how far we missed. Third-party outages, DNS and registrar failures and scheduled maintenance are excluded, which is standard and is spelled out in the SLA. Almost nobody our size publishes one with credits attached.
What if I cancel the monthly?
30 days notice, clean exit at the close of the billing cycle. You keep the site, the domain, the ad account and the data, and we hand over a final backup of everything plus what you need to move it. The site does not stop working because you stopped paying us. You will just need hosting and someone doing the updates.
Ownership and access
6 questions
Do I actually own the site?
Yes. Site, domain, ad account and data, in your name, from day one. No proprietary platform, no locked builder, no exit fee. We will not lease you your own website.
Who owns my Google Business Profile?
You do, always. We ask for manager access, never ownership transfer, and we send you an invite link plus a guide rather than asking for your Google password. If we part ways we remove ourselves and nothing has to move.
Whose name are the ad accounts in?
Yours, with your billing. We get partner access. This matters more than people realize, an agency that owns your ad account owns your entire campaign history, and starting that over is a genuine cost.
Do you need my passwords?
Rarely, and we will always ask for delegated or manager access instead where the platform supports it. Where a shared credential is unavoidable, it goes through a password manager, not an email.
What do I get at handover?
The site, all logins, the pattern library, and a walkthrough. Everything in your name. You own it outright from day one, the monthly is care, not rent.
Do you sell or share my data, or my leads?
No. Your lead data is yours. We do not sell it, share it, or use it to build a list. The enrichment and verification tools we run on your leads are working for you, not for us.
Results, and what we will not promise
7 questions
Can you guarantee I will rank number one?
No, and nobody can. Anyone who guarantees a ranking by a date is either lying or about to do something that gets you penalized. What we will commit to is the work: the profile, the citations, the schema, the service-area pages, the speed and the monthly maintenance, all of which is checkable, unlike a promise.
How long until I see leads?
Capture works from launch day and the lead counter is on immediately. Ads produce data in days. Local SEO compounds over months, not weeks, expect movement at 60 to 90 days and real results past that. Anyone quoting you a ranking date is guessing.
Will you buy or write reviews for me?
No. It violates Google’s terms, it is illegal under FTC rules, and it is the fastest way to lose a profile you spent years building. We will build you the funnel that asks every finished customer properly, at the right moment, which works better anyway.
Will you build me 200 city pages?
No. Doorway pages are a 2014 tactic with a 2026 penalty attached. We build the service-area pages that earn their place, with genuinely different content, and stop there.
What goes in the monthly report?
Leads, where they came from, and what they were worth. Not impressions, not followers, not total traffic. If we cannot tie it to a lead, it does not go in your report. We hold ourselves to the same standard we hold your marketing to.
What is enrichment and scoring, in plain terms?
Enrichment fills in what the form did not capture, whether the phone is an active line, whether the name matches it, whether they are a homeowner in your service area. Scoring ranks the lead on fit and intent so your team calls the right person first instead of calling in the order the emails arrived. Both are Growth Engine capabilities; below that, leads are captured and attributed but not scored. They do not depend on ads: if your referral and organic flow is already strong and the problem is sorting it rather than getting more of it, Growth without ad spend gets you enrichment and scoring at $1,000 a month.
Do I need more traffic or better follow-up?
Usually follow-up, and we will tell you that even though traffic is the more expensive thing to sell you. Most businesses do not have a traffic problem; they have a capture, speed-to-response and follow-up problem. Fixing that is cheaper and works faster.
For artists and bands
6 questions
Why not just use a link page?
A link page is a hallway, every visit ends somewhere else, on a platform that owns the relationship and rents your audience back to you. It also cannot hold the thing that actually gets you booked: a real press kit a promoter can open in one click.
Can I update my own tour dates?
Yes, and you should, from a phone, in a parking lot, the day a date confirms. Dates, releases, photos and press quotes are all yours to edit. You should not have to email an agency to announce a show.
Do you do PR, playlist pitching or distribution?
No. We are not a label and not a publicist. Anyone selling you a website and a playlist campaign in the same breath is selling you neither one well.
Can you sell merch on my site?
We build it, you run it. Link out to what you already use, or put checkout on your own domain for $1,500 and $50 a month. If you are moving real volume with sizes and inventory, that is the full store build and we will price it honestly rather than pretend the cheap one covers it.
I have not released anything yet. Should I get a site?
Not yet. Build the catalog first, a great site around three demos is money spent early. Come back when there is something to point at and shows on the calendar.
I am a musician and I also run a business. Which do I buy?
Usually both, on separate domains. Marquee for the act, Presence or Foundation for the studio, the teaching or the venue. They are different audiences and they should not share a homepage.
Not answered here?
Ask. We will answer straight rather than route you to a call, and if the answer turns out to be that we are not the right shop, you will get that too.
+1-248-205-6977 · Mon–Sun, 9am–9pm ET
Related: how a build runs · pricing · who we do not work with
- Published pricing
- Month to month, no minimum term
- You own everything
