You’re very welcome! Best wishes with your new self-employment. I hope it all goes excellently, and I’m very glad some of the content here has helped.

I am extremely new in this whole business thing, in fact, I just got my business number about 2 weeks ago. I have, in the past, done projects for people as a freelancer - luckily i havent had problems, instead i’ve had really positive feedback. BUT….

I’ve been put into a position (moving interstate) where I’m finding it really hard getting “work” work. As in, full time, part time work. Which is why I have started up my own business. But previously always working for someone else, and really, being quite peeved off with my salary, I just didn’t/don’t have a clue where to start. I think I have heavily underestimated my own worth, example being I did 4 coffee cup designs including a logo re-set… (2 were just, “put-this-here” on this color) the other two were “whatever idea you want lass”. I ended up charging AUD$200 Which is probably something ridiculous when it comes to pounds where you are……

Your posts and all of these replies are really helping me figure out how to price jobs. Although being in such a desperate time for money, I think I am also down-pricing because i really *need* the work.

Thanks for an AWESOME site. You have already helped me heaps ;)

Good luck with it.

I had a look at your design questionnaire, and notice that you don’t charge any more than $1,000 for a job. I think you’re ruling out larger projects by limiting yourself in this way. Do you agree?

Had my design survey done through Wufoo, glad to know if there is any better survey template around. Mine is on this page
http://cluelessclay.com/blog/design-survey/

You mention that you don’t give the price in the first email unless the client specifically asks. It’s good that you prefer to wait, but on the other hand, how can you give a price so fast without knowing much about the project?

I totally agree with you about the many other factors that should persuade a client to hire you. Price is only one piece of the design puzzle.

Cat,

That’s a great idea to add an extra option to the ‘drop-down’, one for ‘Don’t know, please advise’. I’ll have to implement that. Thanks!

Instead of putting set prices, a drop down range on an online form would work. Then right away you know if there’s a fit. Or not. And no one wastes their time.

Of course, first time clients never seem to know what they can afford. So having a ‘don’t know please advise’ option would be beneficial too.

One reason is that they are all around the country and travelling for visits would hike my prices up too high for a sme, and some obviously are overseas. But the biggest reason is that I have children with me all day, so definitely can’t do even local meetings :)

I don’t tend to give the price in the first email unless they specifically as for the price. Instead I focus on getting to know the client and their aspirations so that it’s clear that I’m not a ‘wham bam thank you mam’ type of service ;)

Later on I discuss prices for ‘the job’ but never ever give my hourly rate unless specifically asked. I agree that this can make them think “How much!?”

I don’t want those thoughts running round their minds and I don’t want to have to justify my hourly rate in detail by giving them a run down of expenses and service factors and what not.

Out of interest someone did ask very recently, only last week I believe, which I think is the first person to ever ask, and when I told them they did seem to feel my prices were high, but it didn’t stop them going ahead anyway with quite a sizeable project.

Once the first project was half way through, she started signing up for more. Clearly feeling that the hourly rate was justified.

I don’t think we should fear too much revealing prices or rates, few customers buy on price alone, there are many other deciding factors aside from this.

Amanda Vlahakis’s last blog post..Online Businesses On ‘The Cheap’ - RANT

Ah I see. I thought that as the comment URI links were ‘nofollow’, that they’d bring no search engine benefit, and I’ve read how other blog authors become wary of the commenter when they use specific anchor text with no name.

That said, I appreciate your responses, and it’s nice to be able to reply mentioning your name.

Glad you enjoy the blog posts, and if you have any ideas or suggestions feel free to get in touch.

Bye for now.