Should I raise my prices?

Hi Thomas,

When selling anything the most valuable word is 'because'.

Never make a statement without explaining it. We copywriters call it 'reason why copy writing'.

If you're receiving recommendations, and yet not converting it's probably because of the unspoken objection in the mind of your prospect.

So you need to address this is advance, by telling them what you've told us: you've been clever enough to automate most of the routine stuff, so you can give them top quality coupled with rock bottom prices and sky high satisfaction.

And then prove the satisfaction with testimonials from satisfied clients.

Warmest regards,

Paul

Edit: You have a link you can show me for the quality and price and what do you think you should charge?

Hello,

You need to price your work so you make a living. Don't worry about others.

With design work it is easy to see the quality for the price.

Word of mouth is all I have been doing for the last 5 to 7 years, I don't even have order links on my website.

hope that helps

If you have any questions let me know

Richard

Finding the "sweet spot" is something many companies struggle with. I would encourage you to do some A/B split testing and see how your customers react to a potential price change, you might be pleasantly surprised.

It is worth a test. You're getting a lot of sales from word of mouth because people are saying good things about your product and their friends want to get involve with it. The name of the game in internet marketing is test test test until you find a price that offers you the most amount of money.

Never price anything according to what you think it's worth. Price it according to what your prospect KNOWS it's worth. For example, you might think your effort is worth $xxx, but how does your prospect know that? He has no framework to determine that because he is not in your business. He is in HIS business and he sure knows what an extra sale is worth to him, or what an extra client is worth to him.

So always make an effort to discuss your services in terms of what he knows and you should have better luck.

I hope this helps.
PhilG

You know, this was a pretty common question that I used too ask myself.

#1 - What can you offer your clientele that makes your price tag worth it?

I used to go about Freelancing and business in a selfish way. I used to only think about how much money I could make doing Freelancing but what I didn't realize was, it's not about that at all. It's about how much money you can make THEM. If you ever sit down in front of a board or in front of the owner of a company, the first thing they're going to ask you is, "what can you do for us?"

And you damn well better be prepared to answer, because they're not patient and they're not going to go easy on you. You shouldn't focus too much on what exact number you should be charging people, you should instead focus on how much business and value you can bring to their company or cause.

There are some web designers who charge $250 per website and then you have companies like Resource Interactive. My friend works for them and they charge $300,000 for a simple website or re-design. I'm not joking and i'm not exagerating. They work with the top brands like Wendys, Victoria's Secret, Kohler, etc. So how do you think they go about charging their clients?

They don't ask, "how much money can we get out of them?" They ask themselves how much value they can give to their clients and what will be in the best interest of the client before they give them an estimation and a quote, which is why they usually always land the deals they get.

#2 - What kind of clientele do you want to deal with?

Apart from what I said above, I will tell you now from personal experience, that different clientele comes with different pricing.

If you deal with clientele that's as cheap as they come, they're going to be some of the pickiest and most demanding people you have ever met. Why? They don't have the money to hire anyone else and generally the mentality that comes with these people is that they want everything for nothing.

Your pricing for the most part will effectively decide what kind of clientele you're dealing with. I started out writing for $1.00 per 100 words and I learned a hard life lesson since then.

You may be in a different field but here are a few lessons I learned about those $5.00 per article clients.

#1 - The majority of them will NEVER pay a single penny of the total upfront (not negotiable). Also, the price is never negotiable.

#2 - They want you to be available for free edits if possible (and sometimes, they even want you to do free re-writes).

#3 - They'll want spintax (sometimes) and some of the most ridiculous SEO requirements that make absolutely no sense.

#4 - A lot of them seem to be hooked on a magical percentage of their main keyword which introduces 'forced writing' rather than natural writing that engages the readers. The focus of writing should be on the reader and never solely just on SEO even if you are trying to optimize your content for a keyword.

I don't know what you currently charge but I will advise you to raise your prices if you are one of those $100-$500 developers and only target the high paying clientele. Hell, even as independent contractor, you can charge people $3,000 - $5,000 for web development services but if you're working by yourself, you'll have to become a jack of all trades which is both a designer and a developer.

A lot of people confuse what a designer and developer actually do and I learned this when I first started talking to people from that company I mentioned earlier. A designer simply lays out the design of the page and hands the developer all the necessary imagery to put the page together. The developer then takes the puzzle pieces and fits them where necessary. It's very important to understand the difference here.

Also, don't take on more than you can handle. When you work for yourself, a lot of clients will want to talk, they'll want revisions, they will change their mind on things (even once something is launched) and they'll want you to be available for them constantly. Sometimes, you have to tell them no and you have to balance your time between clients and learn how to prioritize your tasks.

This is just a basic briefing to the world of Freelancing and pricing your clientele, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask away.

Thank you everybody this is extremely encouraging and helpful. I believe it's the message I'm conveying when prospects are coming to my website. I just revamped my website a week ago and I'm hoping I can start converting prospects through my website instead of only word of mouth. I am definitely going to add some additional tweaks.

@Corey Geer, you have written down my whole situation down to a T. This is something I am battling with are the quality of clients. I do have plenty of needy clients that wants the most out of you for nothing. At the moment, I'm definitely trying to reach out to new clients and this is why it's urgent for me to find out what's holding me back.

I believe everything I have now is a great start and if you have any more, it'll be deeply appreciated. Here's my website Kwagu LLC

There can only be one lowest cost provider - make sure it's NOT you!

With that said, if you're providing a service it's usually time to raise prices when you have too many customers. If you think that your prospects are not buying because they think they are getting "cheap quality", it's not because of your price, it's because you are not showing them the value.

Value and price are two very different things.

Thanks, I believe you nailed the problem. I lead with affordable price in a lot of my sales and then I try to over deliver in value when my customers see what they get. I've been told to always make sure it's easy for you to over deliver to your clients. I believe I need to start leading with the lowest price deal and just stick to talking about benefits.

Also the problem isn't I have too many clients. Over the years, my system and technology has became more tightened where I can deliver more at a quicker rate. So I'm looking for ways to increase my sales conversions.

Hello,

Thanks for the site url, now would you like some advise it will be critical but helpful.

If you can't handle it then I will hold off.

Richard

That's a really good question!

Actually, there are quite a few good reasons for doing so. One of the most important is that you're so busy that you can't give the value that you want to your most important customers.

I wrote an article about this topic that you may want to read. You can find it here: http://ezinearticles.com/?Your-Onlin...es?&id=7389730

Don't cheapen your services by lowering prices; even if some of what you do is automated. Your customers are paying you for your expertise, otherwise they'd be doing the job for themselves.

You can always raise your price to test it out...no harm trying

You can look at what price your competitors are selling and lower your price a little..

Hope this helps