Lesson 7: Pricing

What You’ll Learn: One of the hardest things to do in a creative field is to price your creativity to be competitive and support the lifestyle you’re trying to achieve. In this lesson, we’ll explore different pricing strategies that will allow you to make bank without getting taken to the bank.

Pricing (continued)

Assignments

  1. Think of your pricing strategy to date. Is it matching the amount of work you are putting into the project? Does it cover your expenses as well as the time you spent courting the work and closing out the job? What can you do to make adjustments, if needed, to bring them more into alignment?
  2. Think about your clients. Do you think they place an appropriate value on your creativity? Are you priced at a place where you are making a decent living, aren’t living sale to sale? Is there room to increase your pricing or change the way you price so you can increase your profits?
  3. What is your payment timeframe? Do your clients pay you on time, or do you have to remind them to pay? If they don’t pay you, do you have a mechanism in place to make sure the funds are successfully collected? Do you have a policy in place to suspend work if there is a certain level of uncollected payments?
  4. How are you perceived in the marketplace? Are you a low-cost provider, mid-tier or on the high end? Is your clientele aligned with your pricing? And are you at the right price point? If you need to increase your pricing, should you move the needle with your existing clients, or would it be something you can do with new clients?