Six months of a content retainer on nine parcels bought me what, exactly?

The two inquiries that said they came from the video are the only data you have. 61 others came from portals and you're crediting the retainer for them because the timing lines up. I'd want to know what the portal view counts did over the same six months, since better copy and better photos lift portal performance too, and that's a different service than posting reels twice a week. If the copy and photos are doing the work, you're paying retainer prices for a launch product.

Disagree with verity a little. On land the social side does something the portals don't, which is reach people who weren't looking for land at all until they saw a clip of a creek. That buyer doesn't exist on a portal. I run 20 something transactions a year on thin margins and the only reason I know that is I ask every single caller where they saw it, first question, before anything else. You have 63 inquiries and no source field on any of them. Fix that this week and your renewal question answers itself in 90 days.

Also $1,800 for 12 videos and 20 posts is not expensive for decent work. It's expensive for bad work. You didn't say whether the videos are good.

The renewal question depends on one assumption: whether your buyer arrives through discovery or through search. Those two behaviors respond to different content and price differently.

Search buyers are already looking for acreage in a county. They convert on listing copy, accurate acreage and access detail, and photography that answers their objections. That work is per-asset. It scales with listings, not with calendar time, and per-parcel pricing matches it structurally.

Discovery buyers see a clip and become interested afterward. That audience only exists if there is a standing account with recent activity, and it decays when posting stops. Retainer pricing matches that, because you are paying for continuity rather than deliverables.

Your provider's claim about accounts dying after two months is directionally reasonable for algorithmic reach on short-form platforms, and it is more true for personal brand accounts posting to a following than for a listing account whose traffic is mostly referred from portals or search. She is applying an agent-brand model. Whether it transfers to your parcels is an empirical question you have not measured.

So measure it. Add a source question to every inquiry and tag which parcel and which channel. Ninety days gives you enough to see whether discovery inquiries exist independent of a live listing. If they do, continuity has value and the retainer is defensible. If every inquiry clusters within days of a portal listing going live, you are buying launch content and paying for a subscription.

One more thing on option three. AI drafting will get you passable copy and rough cuts. It does not decide which 20 seconds of a 38 acre parcel makes someone call. That judgment is what the $500 is for, and it is only worth $500 if she is actually good at it.

Working through licensing right now and this is the part that made me sit up. Who is signing off on the acreage, access, and any buildability language in the copy she rewrites? Advertising rules on property claims and who may make them differ by state and by whether the person writing is licensed, so that's a question for your broker or an attorney in your state before renewal, not a forum question. Practically, I'd want a review step where you approve every listing description in writing before it goes live, whichever pricing option you pick.

Turnaround is the thing I'd put in the renewal. On the management side we went from retainer to per-item and the quality was the same, but the wait went from two days to nine because we stopped being a standing commitment on somebody's calendar. If your parcels come to market on a slow schedule that's fine. If you ever need copy live in 48 hours because a neighbor listed and you want to get ahead of it, per-parcel pricing usually means queue position, and nobody writes that in the quote.

Look at the pricing by backing into her hours. 12 videos at maybe 90 minutes each shot, cut and captioned, 20 statics at 20 minutes, plus copy and posting, call it 30 hours a month. $1,800 divided by 30 is $60 an hour, which is a working rate for someone competent and not a premium at all. Your $500 strategy option is about 8 hours. Ask her what she'd actually do with 8 hours, and if the answer is a monthly call and a content calendar, that's the honest scope. If she says she'd also review your cuts, she's underquoting and will drift or resent it by month three. I've done both sides of that and drift always wins.