How to price your own work?

[goodiesgraphics]

pricing still gives me nightmares.
I think I need to be more confident in my own product.
Having said that I think some designers charge too much. But hey, I guess they balance out the suckers who charge $15 for a 4 hour logo deisgn (and then supplier it as jpeg).

[noxer]

and i was thinking that for over two weeks of extensive work for a client...starting with logo and ending up with carring some supplies for it's bussines...600 euros would be too much...but then again... i live in romania...so it's probably normal (not)

[Panther21001]

I am in the middle of my first paying job. What I did, before I even set out to do business, is research. Lots and lots of research. What I found is to go down the list of things to consider when pricing:

-How many months (or years) of experience you have
-How good of quality your work is based on other's opinion's
-Who your client is; clients that can gain emmense profits from your work should be charged a bit more that those clients who don't have very much to gain (a good way to check this is to ask for the client's financial statements)
-Never shy away from charging more than you think you should
-Stay sturdy, don't let your client push you around too much
-Decide whether to go on an hourly or flat fee; hourly is good if you've had enough experience to know whether or not to judge the estimated time you're going to spend on a project; Flat fee's are good for the beginner, mainly because you won't have to ponder on the topic of pricing while also trying to stay on task with everything else your client wants

Well, I hope this helps you out a little. I basically summed up what I researched for hours.

Oh yeah, I'm a brand new member. First post. . .

~Philip

[RMS7Design]

I usually charge on a per-project basis and always ask what the client's budget is. then I propose 2-3 estimates with one including their budget, one including additional options I believe would be of interest to the client and one with high-end features. As many of you have said... it all depends on the cleint but still it does not mean you have to lower your price for a quality work. You can always find a solution appropriate to the client's budget while retaining quality. It can be either using templates that you customize or developing a complete solution from the ground up. Like if a client ask for a CMS... it can be quite costly to develop... but you can also propose already existing CMS that you will customize.... In my case, I have put a bottom price I don't work below becasue it is just not worth it..

[ivancruz]

Well, here in México people are not really willing to pay for a cutting edge design, u can come out with a really great idea but they prefer to go to a place like "deremate.com" that is like ebay and hire the guy who modifies a downloaded template for $500.00 MXN (Aprox $50 US) and the only thing those guys do is cheap the market so u can't charge a lot, there are some clients that DO understand that quality means spend more, so I have to make an aproximation of how much the client will be willing to pay and by that I charge, it sucks, but anyway when I accept a job I give my 200% because that's ur portfolio and ur portfolio always do the talking with new potential customers, thats all I have to say for now, see ya!

[adamdyson]

A teacher of mine once told me that when you give someone an estimate for a job, you take the amount of time that it would take you to accomplish the task, if you had only the most basic, most horrible tools, and you encountered a problem every step of the way. then, you take that, double it, and tell your client that this is the shortest amount of time that it could possibly take for you to accomplish the task, assuming you have no problems.

[dorian]

I agree with what has been said already, it depends on the client, because some big companies will find it suspicious if they don't pay big bucks for what they wanted, and some small companies will just walk away if it's too expensive for them. But it's also part of your job to make them realise it's worth it.