I’ve been experimenting with value-pricing in my freelancing work and have had my perceptions of value-based pricing turned around after listening to over 6 hours of podcast episodes.
In the past, I always wanted to be the robin hood of pricing. Steal from the rich (those greedy freelancers who charge thousands) and give to the poor (freelancers like me showing people how to do things cheaply).
I was wrong in thinking that it’s all about price and that selling something for next to nothing was the answer.
Really, I’m selling a finite resource (my time) alongside my skills (that others have), packaged with how I make people feel and a bunch of promises around what I’ll deliver and when.
It’s not a commodity and it’s not two dimensional. It’s complex and tied into risk, the products, the research, the work and the support. It can’t be a cost plus profit model as it’s more than this.
If you’re like me, you’re reading this thinking it’s some poor excuse to charge thousands and think of yourself as Einstein solving the pressing problems of the world. You’re probably not but what you are doing is solving the pain for someone, rescuing the time for someone and helping someone sleep easier at night. What’s the cost of that?
Most of this comes down to mindset and I haven’t nailed it but I’m slightly further down the road.