Pricing Design

The other day I had a very interesting conversation with a fellow small business owner. As we were chatting, she made a point that was so short and sweet, I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. She said, "You should never feel guilty about the price that you charge. If you feel you are providing a quality service, and that it has value, then you should probably be charging even higher than what you already are."

There are so many books and articles about pricing graphic and website design. The concept is pretty simple: figure out how much money you'd like to make in a year as a freelance designer and calculate that down to the hour. For every project or service you provide, multiply that rate by the estimated number of hours it takes for you to complete that job (visit creative latitude's salary calculator at http://www.creativelatitude.com/neils_newbies/neils_newbies_0206.html).

It sounds so simple. But why do some clients take such offense to pricing? Is it not pricing in general, but just the particular service they're paying for? Do they think graphic design is not worthy of paying the price for a professional?

I've had clients make me write a detailed report of every minute and what I was doing during that time. They wanted to see if I was upcharging them for no reason, or if I could really account for all of the time I had proposed in my estimate. I feel like this scheme is almost a backwards way of making a designer feel guilty for charging a professional rate, if a rate at all.

There will always be clients who are just in it to get something for nothing. I've learned that in these situations, it's not worth my time and to close the door on that opportunity. By doing work for less than you know it's worth, it becomes a discredit to yourself and to the profession. For more passionate words on the subject, visit www.no-spec.com.