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.
—
(via Mark Anderson/Andertoons.com)
One way to know you’re REALLY underselling your services: When soem client INSIST on paying you double what you charged. Yikes.
No kidding…the first engagement shoot we did for casual friends turned out pretty good, and they insisted on paying. We had no idea what to charge and weren’t comfortable with the idea of charging people for something we loved to do so much. So we said…just pay us what you can afford and what you feel the photos are worth to you. We were expecting $100, and would’ve been very happy with that. They were thrilled to pay us $1000! – ten times what we would’ve valued ourselves at!
sounds like you are targeting realtors 🙂
So my question is if you’re just starting out, like me, do I still double my price?
Get my name out there for cheap/free services or charge more?
When do I reach the point where I start charging for my services?
This is a great discussion and very timely but I need some hard numbers here. I know what I charge and if I doubled that I would poop my pants in fear of sending out that email to clients. So how can we start talking about hard numbers to help me see if I’m under valuing myself? Can I just say what my hourly rate is, u all check out my work on my website and tell me if I’m undervaluing my time? Thank uuiuuuuuuu!
I know I am worth a lot more than I charge, but I am taking a slow road to charging more. It’s about confidence. If you say your price with confidence, the client will believe that is what you are worth. If it feels too high (which is my problem…I’m a cheapskate by nature), then my client is going to feel uncomfortable as well. Yes, I have lost a client because I didn’t charge enough, but I increase my price only with my increasing comfort in my worth and portfolio.
what has helped me with the fear of charging “too much” is taking a long hard look at ALL my overhead & expenses, investment in learning, time, skill, equipment and then adding PROFIT on top of all that. For example, if you charge $20/hour for each of: time, skill and equipment and add $10/hour profit, we come to about $70/hour. Now for every hour we shoot, we spend at least 3 hours editing/driving/etc. So we try to never be lower than $280/hour of shooting. Not that we tell our clients that, but its a guideline for us. That is just a baseline that we use, of course you can add for second shooter, prints, digital files, minimum hourly req, etc. I suspect you will realize that you do need to charge a lot to be able to deliver the goods consistently. low prices take away all your options – investment in learning, can’t buy equipment, can’t afford good assistants, can’t spend money on advertising & marketing, etc. Don’t feel guilty about charging a fairly high price – they don’t apologize for the price of a BMW just because a KIA costs $14k.
…and people will not respect you until first you respect yourself. This advice of Chase’s is excellent. Most business people tend to undervalue their service. Even if you do not get as many jobs, you be making the same profit or more, and will have so much more time and less stress. Plus, how do we know that when we don’t get certain jobs, that maybe it because we’re too low?