

How I Made $14,400/hr Fixing WordPress - jacobwg
http://www.petersenmediagroup.com/business-tips/how-i-made-14400hr-fixing-wordpress/

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cheald
When you're charging for work like this, you aren't just charging for the 30
seconds it takes to fix it - you're charging for the years of experience that
enable you to do it, plus the 30 seconds it takes to actually do it.

To put it in strictly economical terms, it would have taken the client more
than $120 worth of her time to develop the expertise necessary to fix the
problem. Thus, paying $120 for the fix - no matter no long it actually takes -
is worth it for her.

~~~
paulgb
Not only that, the sale had more than 30 seconds of overhead. It may be 30
seconds of actual work, but the $120 includes soliciting the sale, invoicing
the client, communication, transferring credentials, etc. There's no such
thing as 30 seconds worth of work.

I used to do this sort of work in high school. I got to know a bunch of bugs
in IE and when people were having trouble I'd help them for money. There were
times when I'd net over $100/hour, but they were few and far between.

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sjs382
Or How I Made $900/hour for Picking up a Quarter on the Sidewalk

Or Extrapolation Gone Bad

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zachinglis
I liked the article and thought it was good but ruined by the link-bait title.

As said, the the article itself was good though.

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krapp
I appreciate the lesson in this post. I suffer from the same kind of 'guilt'
myself, most of my freelance income right now comes from tweaking wordpress or
javascript for Business Catalyst sites. It's easy to underestimate the value
ones' own expertise in an area where that expertise, in the field at large,
may not be very sexy or when you're dealing with non-technical clients who
balk at paying more per hour than they would someone to cut their lawn, but
just want their website to _work_.

And yet I've been told by other more seasoned pros that I should be charging
three times what I am. It's kind of ridiculous how people can shortchange
themselves.

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aioprisan
The title is completely inaccurate and misleading. He made $120 for what he
says is 30 seconds of work. It's more like 3-5 minutes if you include
communications back and forth with the client, connecting to the server,
looking around etc.

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agscala
The title is a bit misleading. He only earned $120 for fixing a wordpress
configuration file.

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duiker101
Or: how to make sensationalist titles while taking advantage of not tech-savyy
people.

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daemon13
This is only applicable when the project scope is pre-defined/fixed.

What would be the price setting methodology, i.e. how would this person charge
in a case when smth truly innovative would need to be developed? :-)

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Lenad
I'm wondering why he said $120 in the first place, and not $100 or anything
else...

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jacobwg
Yeah, I'm not the original author of this post, so I submitted this to HN to
see what the community's feedback might be. Though I like his points about
pricing for the value of the product rather than hourly time, it appears that
HN doesn't like this specific example.

~~~
larrys
"it appears that HN doesn't like this specific example."

Perhaps because they are focusing on the linkbait title rather than the
message (which is often repeated). Stop worrying about thinking you are
ripping people off because something is so simple for you to do and put your
efforts into providing value to someone who doesn't know what you know.

The only reason you can charge for what you know is that you did something
before or spent time learning it. You know something that someone else doesn't
know. I've had wordpress problems and would easily pay $120 to avoid hours
worth of research and work (unless as sometimes I enjoy the challenge and have
the time to do that work but that's not business it's technotainment I guess.)

