I still remember making my first website sale. I couldn’t believe that someone was going to pay me $500 to build a website. It honestly felt like winning the lottery.
I’ve been thinking about that feeling a lot ever since we had a discussion in the group about your “ideal” project price a couple weeks ago. It’s always interesting since members of TAB range from just starting out to seasoned vets, and we stretch across the globe.
In one of the replies someone mentioned not being able to imagine someone willing to pay $10K.
But for the sake of the conversation, no matter where you are and what prices you charge, swap out $10K for whatever number feels totally out of reach for you.
If you want to get there, I think the first thing you have to ask yourself is if you’ve ever given anyone the opportunity to spend $10K? It sounds elementary, but no one is going to hand you $10K if you don’t ask for $10K. And yes, some people want to spend that much.
Maybe it’s because they want the best that money can buy, or because they have a budget that evaporates if they don’t use it, or simply because they don’t want to look cheap.
Of course, you and I wouldn’t pay $10K for a website, because we are comfortable and confident in doing it ourselves.
That confidence took years to build. We studied, we practiced, we made a lot of mistakes. But it’s easy to leave all those kinds of “costs” out of your pricing.
Yes, it can feel really scary throwing out a big number. I was nervous sending out that first $500 estimate 9 years ago. But today, I don’t think twice about sending an invoice for 10X that and calling it a “small project”.
If you want to push yourself and try to move up the pricing ladder, I think the easiest way is to offer 3 pricing options:
- Option 1: Your normal pricing for your normal amount of work.
- Option 2: Everything in your normal package, plus a few extras (maybe optimizing their Google Business Profile, creating a set of social media images, and configuring an email list with a signup) for about 50%-100% more.
- Option 3: Here’s where you throw in everything you could do to help them out. Professional copywriting, a year of ongoing SEO work, a training session for their team, conversion tracking with a nice little dashboard, brand guidelines, etc. And for option three you’ll want to charge at least 3X your base price.
This way you still have the safety net of the most affordable option (the number you’re comfortable saying and you know you can sell), but you give your client the opportunity to spend more if they want to.
There are a lot of psychology-based reasons this works, but anecdotally, agencies who do this will tell you clients almost always go with the middle package. Just that alone might double your revenue.
A handful of others will go with the cheapest option (which is what you were going to charge anyway).
But some people will surprise you and sign up for the most expensive package (and it’s often the prospect you’d least suspect!)
They can’t spend that much if you never give them the chance.
So do your clients really not want to spend that much? Or are you just saying no for them?
