Play or Download this Episode (Recorded live on 08/24/2012)

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About the Show

This is BizCraft, the podcast about the business side of web design, recorded live almost every two weeks. Your hosts are Carl Smith (@carlsmith) of nGen Works and Gene Crawford (@genecrawford) of UnmatchedStyle.

Episode Overview

In this episode we talk all about pricing. How we approach it, stuff we’ve learned elsewhere and how Carl is working on changing the way nGenWorks does it.

We pretty much ape then entirety of Brian Hoff’s Google+ post

Discussing questions from the post:

Daniel Rowe: What have you learned about working with clients who also want to be the art director on a project?

Nate Tharp: How much discovery/scoping of the project do you do before providing a client with an estimate?

Dave Dawson: I’m curious on how folks are able to get a consistent amount of work coming in, while scheduling it far enough in advance so you know what to expect in the near future and have some security.

Quoting Brian Hoff directly from one of his answers:

First off, forget about time. Time is some made up number. Clients want to know upfront, how much something is going to cost. And let’s face it, there’ no way to determine exactly how much time a website takes to create. It’s impossible. Assessing and pricing by “skill” is also a difficult task. Honestly, there are so many factors that go into pricing that’s why its not so cut and dry. For example, let’s say your skill level is the same as last year, but the only difference is that you are denying more work because you are extremely busy and continuously keep getting new work and booking far in advance. Do you keep the same rates even though your “skills” are the same? If you run a smart business, the answer is no. You up your rates to meet supply and demand. See, it’s tricky. The one thing I promise you is that the more you do it and the longer you’re in the field the easier it gets. But still, I’m still uncertain if I’m undercharging or over charing my work 🙂 I do know however, that I live a happy life and able to provide my family with all the things they need to be happy.

Jessica Hische’s post “About Pricing“

…if we were one of the lucky ones, we picked up enough client work to keep us from retreating, tail between our legs, to our previous lives as employees. We completely fucked ourselves over on those first few jobs but eventually cobbled together a relatively good standard contract and learned to say enough is enough after the 10th round of revisions. This is not the stuff we learned in college. If you even thought about contracts and invoices before that art school diploma hit your hand I commend your professors, but most of us were off in la la land developing identities for fictitious products, complaining about how we only had seven weeks to get that logo right…

Other points she makes for discussion:
– Pricing hourly punishes efficiency.
– How do you know if you priced right?
– Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about pricing?
– The Pricing Domino Effect: don’t price out cheap because you are young or just starting out…

Carl mentioned the book: Selling the Invisible

Gene mentioned the book: Brewing Up A Business

Beers from the end of the show

Gene: Magic Hat – Demo
Carl: Dogfish Head – Raison D’Etre

THANK YOU!

Huge thanks to everyone who checked out the live show. We’ll be back on in 2 weeks to kick it up again. Don’t miss getting your question sent in for the next show too! OR you can call in on the Grasshopper phone # (888) 668-6110 and leave an audio question we can play on the show.