Ever read the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs? It’s Hilarious and you can often glean some real insight from it. Take the last article,
“I love all this whinging about iPhone prices”
“With the NeXT machine, we figured out what would be a fair price, and then we quadrupled that price.”
“But my feeling is that we could do in computers what BMW did with cars. Cool rich asshole-type people would buy our stuff, and then poor lametards would want to have the same thing that the rich assholes had. And once our stuff caught on with cool rich people we’d gradually introduce some lower-end models that aspiring lame-ass people could afford. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to just cut my prices. More people eat at McDonald’s than at French Laundry. Does that mean Thomas Keller should charge fifty cents for a meal, to bring in the crowds? I don’t think so.”
If you do consulting, how you price your services is essentially what you value your time at. When you price, you are answering the question “What is my time worth?” Price it too low and people will see it as less valuable. Price it too high and you may not get any business.
Do you want to sell Fast Food or Gourmet Cuisine?
Just make sure if you’re priced like Gourmet Cuisine that you don’t give your customer a Big Mac. Conversely, if you pay for a Big Mac, don’t expect to get a 5 course lobster dinner.
5 Responses to “What is Your Time Worth?”
Thanks, SEO Black Hat, for the link to FSJ. The candor rang true, pic looked like him too. Thanks for the reminder of the lessons of Dan Kennedy, too, on time management from his No BS series.
What do you want income from your labor to be per year? How many hours per year are you willing to work for that? Do the math to determine the hourly.
Freelancer, here’s a few ideas, might be worthwhile food for thought:
When presented with a project: estimate how much time it will take and name your price accordingly. And in the meantime cut waste and junk expenses and increase self sufficiency and you won’t feel like you need to exchange hours for dollars.
In the meantime,if you haven’t already done so set up a gazillion sites. .info is on sale at Go Daddy. Set up a heap of niche landing pages, monetize them (you know one action per page, whatever you know better than I), drive convertible traffic to them. Surely you can get rid of your car, move in with mom, buy a big bag of organic rice and a water filter which will tide you over until the veggies in the garden are ripe. Whatever. So many angles I can think of off the top of my head.
Take the time to really work for yourself and you’ll stop thinking that you need those cheapskates. Name your price. If they won’t pay, cool, leaves you more time to work on YOUR projects so you wont’ imagine that you need to work on THEIR projects.
If they want YOU. They’ll pay. If they just want cheap, you don’t really need them anyway because all that does is keep you on that hamster wheel and in the rat race.
You don’t have convince anyone but yourself. You cannot tell a client , “I’m good. I’m worth it.” That’s like telling someone “Trust me.” A potential client will positively judge your value based on how you treat yourself and based on the reputation that has preceded you. Start some positive buzz about yourself!
All the best.
Nia, excellent advice. You obviously have some experience in this regard. I’ve already been implementing some of your ideas for the past 2 yrs, but it’s nice to know I’m not a singular freak in that sort of mind frame. (Already got rid of my car, already living with mom for as long as she can tolerate me, already eating organic rice 
Are you reading my mind?
I know what I want out of my online endeavours ($50,000/mth within 3 yrs), I know how to get there, and I have friends in high places helping me on my way (and I they). And I already have a buzz, but haven’t milked it yet. I’m learning to be patient. And this is why I joined SEO Blackhat forum.
Here’s something crazy. Given the name of your website (Master Cleanse, aka the Lemonade Diet), is it kismet that I’m drinking a Mike’s Hard Lemonade (yes, at just after noon on a Sunday) while I ready your advice?
That said, I think it’s time to go after the .info sites as you suggest. I’ve been resisting.
I deal with this all the time. People like to barter, it’s human nature. However, if you let them push you around too much you’ll never get what you are worth.
gh0stb0t
Gh0stb0t: True, don’t get pushed around. Though I recently met a really nice client and it was a shock when he said yes to what I asked for. I actually felt guilty. Call me insane.
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So true, but it’s such a bitch to convince others you’re worth it, even they like you. I’ve been paid as low as $3/hr (effective) for my time and as much as a $100/hr (effective). But when you get into those slump states, it’s hard to convince yourself to hold out for more. And there are always market ceilings. Even after nearly 20 years of mostly contracting, it’s damned hard. So the alternative is to learn to budget really well and take a balance of different rates.