It is very rare that you will find me inserting actual scripts from a blog that I would have read. But this is one instance when I just could not hold myself from doing it. The blog was written in such an inspiring way that i thought of sharing it with everyone here.
The blog was about how freelancers should price their work. The article says: " A person’s willingness to pay for something is directly related to the value they see in it. And like it or not, that value may be as fluffy as “a better life”. Or it may be something quite straight-forward that you just don’t realise. Either way, if you don’t charge correctly for that value, you lose." Rightly said!
The article goes on to say that " frequently freelancers and young agencies in the web industry lose business because they over-value their work. Be honest, how often have you cursed the other guys that won the job on price? The cowboys. The jokers that couldn’t mark up a holding page. Idiots. Their own site doesn’t even validate! But all that happened was that you tried to sell your expertise to someone that just didn’t value it. And can you blame them? Maybe their site needs to describe their business and provide contact details, but doesn’t need the latest, greatest HTML 5 tricks? They don’t give a damn about “perfect” markup and neither do their customers. So why would they pay for it? Would you pay €20 for a pint if the barman told you he’s serving it in his favourite glass, made by a famous, naked, dancing, glass-blowing tribe from Brazil?"
What stands out here is the fact that the freelancer needs to understand the requirement of the client. It is OK to try and sell your services to him but this should not overshadow the basic requirement that the client seeks. Accordingly, this should form the basis as to how you would charge the client. Charge him for what he wants and not for all that, that you can offer! PERIOD.
Rightly stated in the article is "nine times out of ten, your clients value only your availability, flexibility and malleability, not your sweet Javascript skills. Price downwards accordingly."
The entire article is available here.
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