Are the fees or prices you’re charging for your creative services too low? I bet they are.
Try doubling the money. You have to deliver the goods, of course, but that’s true in any work. Chances are that the clients you ditched needed ditching, the clients you carry forward and the new clients you land will pay those fees happily and will better understand the value you bring.
And I’m guessing you’ll be happier and much better off in the long run.
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(via Mark Anderson/Andertoons.com)
This is so right on , I doubled my rates to slow down demand and it actually got more busy for me but I also got way better quality clients – and with bigger packages being bought more often at new higher rates. go figure.
“Competing to be the lowest price is a miserable business.”
great statement
I agree. I raised prices late last year and still completely booked couple months in advance. Too much undervaluing going on in the marketplace as is.
Another key to remember is that you are selling a brand (your brand) and not just a pretty picture. People will pay the price if they want to work with you and what you bring to the table on a business side of things as well as execution and delivery.
Alan, it’s not supply and demand if the client feels there is no alternative. But if you’re making ketchup… Yeah.
We just spent weeks, neck deep in spreadsheets, deciding what we should charge. We finished it up late Sunday night, and were shocked when we put our packages together. We weren’t charging nearly enough. We found that the prices we were charging (which we initially thought were fair) were actually causing us to make no profit, or even lose money in some cases. Our prices went up 2-3 times, which is scary. But the good news is, we are now confident that if we can still get the work, we can make money. If we had kept doing like we were, we would be on our asses by the end of the year. I think this is really good advice from Chase, but I would recommend taking it even further.
Take some time to figure out how much you need to make. How much are your bills? How much will it take to run your business in the next year? How much will your marketing plans cost? How many gigs are you going to shoot? How much will you pay to taxes? These are just a few of the considerations we put into our pricing. It’s a ton of work to figure out your pricing, but nothing great comes without hard work.
Can’t wait to see how our recent price structure changes things for us!