
The Dark Art of Pricing - taylorbuley
http://www.jessicahische.is/obsessedwiththeinternet/
======
enjo
_If you think that is a good price for a professional designer to earn
crafting what is essentially a logo for a huge company, you are mistaken._

Huh? Why would the size of the company and the reach of the logo matter in the
slightest? It's this type of thinking that makes dealing with designers
somewhat frustrating.

I will never (EVER!) pay royalties for work that I commission. If I'm paying
you to build it, I'm paying you to build it _for me_. It's mine.

The thing is, I've yet to have trouble finding someone to do that for me. I've
run into this situation on a few occasions. On each I've politely said no
thanks and took my business to someone who was willing to do it for a
reasonable fee with full rights assignment to me.

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tgrass
I am seeing this request made more and more frequently by designers:

 _By helping to keep pricing standards high, you not only help yourself by
avoiding the title of “The Poor Man’s Marian Bantjes” (essentially the
creative equivalent of a knock-off handbag), you also help every other young
designer struggling to get paid out there, and help every designer that came
before you to continue making a living doing what they love._

Low wages here are a sign of a labor market saturated by qualified designers.
Pleading with youth to raise their wages in order to protect the interests of
those whose careers and income are already established is disingenuous at
best, and naive at worst.

~~~
dominicyen
I attribute low wages to the lack of education of industry-standard rates. The
author brings up a great point about the concealment of pricing amongst
creatives to prevent others from knowing your annual income. How can students
be expected to know how much to charge when their instructors and peers aren't
inclined to speak openly about their numbers?

Without this baseline of information, young designers (myself included) fall
into the trap of pricing far below market due to misinformed notions of 'this
is great experience!' or 'I need to get my name out there'.

An aside: Qualified is an ambiguous term in relation to design. Expand on what
you consider 'qualified' please.

~~~
Dylanlacey
I think concealment is a big problem in most industries, and one of the main
reasons companies try the "not allowed to discuss your salary" trick. The
other one is so that people who aren't as well paid as others but think (or
are) better at the same (or harder) jobs don't get fed up and either demand
more or leave.

So... Ultimately talking about your salary hurts no-one honest and open.
Because trying to prevent staff from being unhappy at being unfairly
compensated OR having to pay a fair wage isn't either of those things.

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chopsueyar
How about "The Dark Art of Getting Your Client to Pay You the Agreed Upon
Amount in a Timely Manner"?

~~~
weaksauce
Here is a great talk on that subject; well worth the 40 minutes if you are
interested in this subject:

"F*ck you. Pay me.": <http://vimeo.com/22053820>

~~~
Dylanlacey
I do love that talk, but it all basically boils down to: * Have a lawyer *
Have them create you a standard contract * Don't ever talk without lawyering,
to their lawyer * Never assign rights of any sort "Until full payment is
received" (At least for that point in the work)

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JacobAldridge
I recently finished _Priceless: The Hidden Psychology of Value_ by William
Poundstone [1]

A number of great lessons in this, but perhaps the key one was that pricing is
not as much of a 'dark art' as many of us believe. There's a good deal of
scientific research into pricing successfully and profitably, which is
detailed therein.

In relation to the OP, of course you need to know where to start - is
$100/hour high or low for my industry and my experience? - etc. Once you have
that information you can build your pricing strategy

The next step (as chopsueyar alludes to elsewhere in this discussion) is
clearly communicating all of the right expectations so you do what the client
wants, the client is delivered what they want, they pay you on time, and you
have the choice to delight them and win loyalty and/or referrals.

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Priceless-Hidden-Psychology-
William-...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Priceless-Hidden-Psychology-William-
Poundstone/dp/1851687823)

------
Revisor
I will join the book recommendations with THE book on pricing - The Strategy
and Tactics of Pricing

[http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Tactics-
Pricing-5th/dp/013610...](http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Tactics-
Pricing-5th/dp/0136106811/)

I'm reading it for a second time right now and it's stuffed with actionable
information on pricing, value communication (aka marketing), price
communication, purchase cycle, pricing over the product lifecycle and so on.

------
chopsueyar
Here is an excellent article on pricing, published in Harvard Business Review
some years ago (it is such a great article, I feel obligated to provide it to
the HN crowd)...

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005RZ5D/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005RZ5D/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=littdidd-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217153&creative=399701&creativeASIN=B00005RZ5D)

 _How Do You Know When the Price Is Right?_

by Robert. J. Dolan

Published Sep 01, 1995

~~~
USSRLivesOn
It appears that there is a free version of this article available here:
[https://www.u-cursos.cl/ingenieria/2009/1/IN578/1/material_d...](https://www.u-cursos.cl/ingenieria/2009/1/IN578/1/material_docente/objeto/225558)

~~~
chopsueyar
Nice.

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sambenson
Could this be applied to development work as well? I.e Mobile / web apps...

~~~
petercooper
Thankfully the software development game isn't quite as arcane and antiquated
as the visual arts. If you pay a coder $250 an hour to write some code for you
from scratch, you generally get to use it for more than a year or on more than
one specific server without being charged additional "licensing" fees. And
that's a _good_ thing.

------
suivix
To whomever's site this is, the font looks really bad on Google Chrome:
<http://i.imgur.com/MZuXS.png>

~~~
hippich
Whatever browser you use, fonts look gorgeous on Google Chrome:
<http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/x10gyshc/Selection_002.png>

