I just came across this ad on the side of my gmail that you sent to me!

You love your customers
Get them to love you back. Get a real graphic designer.
lovebydesign.se

You can pick up a copy here.

Jonathan, your client clearly doesn’t see the value in what you’re doing, and believes design is a commodity to be sold as cheaply as possible. If you ever think you’re underselling yourself, it’s probably because you are.

Remember, as the seller of a service, you can always negotiate the price down, but never up.

I’m a believer in attempting tpo ake the pitch interesting enough to make contact and DISCUSS what is required, Then, you can justify your charges.

Its bot about too expensive or cheap its about putting value, care , thought and benefits for your punter. Not about artistic ego1

If I may suggest take them through the creative process. When something fabulous is produced and it looks simple often punters have no idea how much thought goes into it all.
I know David well remembers the Picasso retort when asked why he charged thousands for something that cost only 50 dollars in materials. Pablo whipped out 50 dollars and said, “here you do it”!

They obviously have a very high regard for your work and it meets the objectives otherwise they would have hired the 1000 a month novice themselves.

If people don’t understand why things cost (not how much you charge) then walk them throught it!

I’ll bet your client hasn’t the feintest idea how php or joomla works.

But this warning you MUST heed; if you lower your charges you will be forever stuck with them. Its easy to do things cheaply.

How much did your computor cost? How much did you pay for CS4 Photoshop? How much is yor rent, social costs, heat, light and all the other overheads?

How long did you study? How much did it cost? Now I don’t want the answers but you do.

My company can’t do anything for less than 120 dollars an hour! Thats not bragging but a reality.

We invest around 25k per annum in new equipment etc Just that is 500 a week!
12 dollars an hour! Now I dont know how much you invest but you should point this out to yor client.

Doing things without profit means that you go out of business much much quicker.

Don’t lower your charges but increase them by 10% and then give justification!

Punters always want things for cheap. If they dont see the value then you haven’t done your job correctly when you pitched it.

You are there to advise. To tell them what they need. Not to be dictated to.

Take care my friend. Let me know if this works for you.

David thank you again.

Ask them how long it takes to produce their medicines. Why they cost so much.

I read your post with much interest. I too am a graphic designer and I work with another guy who is a web developer who is working in PHP/Joomla etc. etc.

As a small company based in Slovakia, Central Europe we are often approached by foreign investors who tend to assume that because we are based in Slovakia that we can offer bargain basement rates, but still offer a fast turnaround with full professional attitude.

We have one client that provides pharmaceutical conferences and events and they have asked us to lower our bills where possible. To give you some idea of what we do for them I’ll explain below.

I personally work on all their graphic design for every event, normally comprising of the following:

- 4 Page Brochure of the event.
- A series of advertisements.
- Animated and static banner files.
- 2/3 Page PDF files for marketing and selling each event.
- Finally numerous updates to the programme averaging about an hour or two for each update that is expected on the same day.

On the web side we are working on.

- Single webpage for the event complete with a link to online payment, delegate username and login area’s and request agenda links + numerous updates to be done immediately.

Up to now are monthly bills have been averaging around 3,000 Euros a month which are client is extremely dis-satisified with paying.

For all of this our clients are wishing us to work on 10 Euros per hour and they expect us to work on this 9 hours every day of the week and “prioritise” all of their work.

My client even suggested to me hiring as he put it “a young college boy” to do the lot for 1,000 Euros a month or less. He also hinted to me “I was in the driving seat to hire a cheap guy who would do anything and be happy with the money and some meal tickets”.

You can appreciate that we are not very happy about this, especially given that we want to run a professional business but we have decided enough is enough!

We value the business as it helps us a lot since we are a growing business and it wouldn’t help us to loose the business however we can’t afford to work long hours and not get paid for it. Slovakia has similar costs of living to the UK now and I have to teach English part time just to make ends meet! If I was to work solely for this client I would simply not be able to afford to live!

Any suggestions on how to handle this “difficult” client.

We would like to work with them on a more professional level of 20-30 Euros per hour, and also offer them 12-24 hour turnaround times to manage things from our side.

Thanks in advance.
Jonathan Hill

Ed, when I started, I found it of use to think of the hourly rate I wanted to earn, then multiply it by the number of hours the project would take. I don’t advise using hourly rates, and believe a set fee is much more appropriate, but at the start, it’s how I found my feet.

Good luck.

Ed. there is no such thing as a “basic” site. To do the job it costs what it costs!

As you are taliking dollars (which aren’t worth a lot these days) don’t even think about starting any site for less than 1,500! But make sure you can give value for money and the site does what it needs to do.

If you are only charging 200 then you need no more than 3 hours from start to finish! What can you produce of value for 200 or 400? Nothing worth having!

Take good care and good luck Ed.