Clients & Pricing

(...and a smorgasbord of other treats)

Clients & Pricing

@Joel_Hughes of jojet.com

#p80N

thank you

• Dragon 32

• Degree in computing

• Worked for AMEX/British Airways

...a brief history of me

MicroBrain Ltd.

Journey

permie contractor freelancer agency?

General Work

• The sort of stuff Jojet does

• (to set the context here...)

“How much does a simple website cost?”

How I price work...

How I get paid...

Pricing*

*see blog for links

No magic formula!

Hourly & fixed both work

Part of freelancing

Mistakes will happen

Do you value yourself?

Uncertainty is common

Huge spectrum

You don’t want to winevery job

Helps filter tyre kickers

Some people will always think you charge

a lot. Always.

You have to learn to negotiate.

It’ll take a while to get the hang of it.

hourly v fixed

Hourly

Hourly

• You does the work, you earns the money

Hourly

• You does the work, you earns the money

• You are selling hours

Hourly

• You does the work, you earns the money

• You are selling hours

• timesheet (& arguments!)

Hourly

• You does the work, you earns the money

• You are selling hours

• timesheet (& arguments!)

• ...not always liked by clients (how much?)

Fixed

• clients like as it is more defined

• Project/phase costs

• More task related

• More risk! /cont....

Freedom to determine price based on..

• How busy you are...

• The value to the client

• The size of the purse

• How much you like/dislike the client

• How much you like/dislike the job

Andy Clarke’s Approach

• Estimate entire project in 2 week sprints

• 2 week block & then re-assess

• One project at a time

Spec one liners...

“There will be an ecommerce element to the website”

Time Tracking

• For where my time is spent

• For how project progress

• For how projects delivered

Support Clients

• Good for recurring revenue

• Bad if you don’t package it properly

Product Plug

Tactics

• “Do you have a budget in mind?” (invest!)

• Don’t allow your process to be shortcut

Quotes

“If you’re charging flat rate, you’re taking on the risk. If you take on the risk, you should also accept some of the benefits.”

“...if you’re running a business, you cannot be afraid to ask for money. If people enjoy your work and if you educate them on the process, they will feel justified to give you what you ask.”

“I get paid for what I know, not necessarily what I do”

“People will look at your high billing rate and they will think you're rich. These are the same people that think you'll forget how much child birth hurts and that owning your own business means you can goof off all the time.”

Andy Budd

“Sadly far too many designers choose to compete on price. We enjoy what we do so much, we’ll do it for free in our spare time. So when somebody says they are willing to pay us—even if it’s less than what we wanted—we feel flattered and eagerly accept the challenge. The desire to create is so strong in most of us, it clouds our judgement.”

T-t-t-that’s all folks

@joel_hughes (twitter/instagram)

jojet.com

p.s. Google form

p.p.s. am always on the look out to collaborate with people more talented than me (i.e. everybody else in this room)

p.p.p.s @stevekirtley