
Freelance as a Service - robwilliams88
http://letsworkshop.com/freelance-as-a-service/
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Paul_Dessert
While posting your prices may seem like a good idea, I'd recommend not doing
it in most cases. I say most cases, because I think it depends on the type of
client you're going after.

In my experience, most clients that actually pay a fair amount of money are
those that understand what their getting into. These clients understand that
they'll be forking out $20k - $40k for a project. So, in these cases, posting
prices is irrelevant. They just want the best person for the job. Your sales
challenge will be elsewhere.

Now, if you're targeting the mom and pops in town and their average budget is
$2k, then posting your price MIGHT help. BUT, this is simply a race to the
bottom. If your rate for a project is $2k, but a competitor will do it for
$1.5k, who will the budget minded client choose? Based off of the price alone,
you've just scared away the client. You probably won't even get the
opportunity of an in-person meeting.

Bottom line, choose your clients carefully. If they pick you because you're
the cheapest, you might have bigger problems ahead of you...

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jlinowski
Sure. But the idea is to do a quick ice breaker project that can later turn
into a larger one down the road. Hence in that case a $500 - $2000 structured
project makes sense, I think.

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Paul_Dessert
I used to work in the printing industry. I thought that if I got a small
order, like a set of business cards, it would be a great way to break the ice.
It almost never worked.

Businesses are in business to make money. If you can provide value (I'm not
saying you can't) and they see an ROI on their money, they'll pay. They want a
solution to their problem AND they want to work with someone they like and
trust.

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mattkevan
This is a fascinating article, thank you.

When I was a freelancer the goal was always to set up small recurring tasks
with a number of clients to smooth the peaks and troughs of work and bring in
a regular income. These examples are a great way of showing how this idea can
be marketed and scaled without having to rely so heavily on word of mouth or
existing relationships - though I'm sure they do still play a part.

The change in approach from 'See what I've done for others', to 'Here's
specifically what I can achieve for you' is key.

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mattriopelle
This is an interesting trend. You've got great insight into this, Rob. I think
ultimately, we have a sales and positioning problem in our industry, not a
productization problem. Products assume our work has a set value to every
client. But they don't and we artificially limit our income potential by
assigning prices before understanding value.

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josephjrobison
What's the best way around this? A 3-tier pricing structure, with the 3rd
being a custom amount? Customers, myself included, also hate when prices are
obscured on a website and will just go away - have you seen any good solutions
to this yourself?

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shalmanese
I've evaluated a lot of design portfolios in my life and it always amazes me
how self-titled "User Experience" designers fail to apply the most basic UX
process to their portfolios.

Stuff like defining who is the user, what are their needs, performing basic
user research, establishing an information hierarchy and testing their designs
against potential candidates.

It's been my experience that too many designers these days are more into the
"fun stuff" of picking a color palette, creating awesome background textures,
geeking out on CSS3 animations and other things that help enhance your
dribbble profile at the detriment to applying themselves to the craft of
design.

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moron4hire
I've been considering setting up my website to be nothing but a work calendar,
with empty blocks the visitor can buy. I'd have control to shut down unbought
blocks if I want free time. I'd have some copy on what I do best, but
essentially the customer could buy my time for anything they want, and could
buy it right away.

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jlinowski
I don't think customers want to buy YOUR time. They want to buy THEIR results
for THEIR business with as less of your time as possible.

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moron4hire
Depends on the service. Sometimes the service explicitly _is_ my time.
Tutoring, for example, or job candidate interviews. I didn't mention this in
my first post, but I think I would emphasize that you're explicitly buying
time _with_ me, i.e. we'd be on Skype together, working through something.
Pair programming for hire!

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robwilliams88
The benefit is never just time it's whatever is the outcome of how you spend
your time. Id read the article

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moron4hire
You would? Go ahead then.

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jlinowski
The question I recently have asked myself was this: on these structured or
productized pages, should we push the customer to a low friction gradual
engagement lead generation action, or close the sale with a payment? I'm now
trying out the former. Thoughts?

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robwilliams88
Which option has the most valuable result to the customer? Regardless of
payment, I think delivering something that is going to really blow them away
upfront is going to be the best thing... And you have alot of amazing work to
do that :)

