 Welcome to the journey. Today we're talking about how to stop sabotaging your pricing strategy as a web pro. Setting a price for your services can be challenging, frustrating, and rewarding all at the same time. Obviously, you anticipate covering your expenses and earning a healthy profit, but you also want to find a balance between losing clients based solely on price that's okay and leaving money on the table. But I want you to ask yourself one thing. Are you landing every client proposal? If the answer is yes, Paul, that's awesome like you're getting clients, but it's probably not the best thing because you're not charging as much as you should be. And hey, everybody starts somewhere. So here are some mistakes that could be sabotaging your pricing strategy. Mistake number one, charging for time instead of value. Now the best way to avoid the inevitable, but why did it take that long? And I bet someone else could do it faster or cheaper is to stop invoicing clients based on the amount of time it took to complete their project. So remember, you're not selling the time it takes to build a website. No, no, no, you're selling a solution that brings your client more customer and increase profits. Yeah, that was definitely a turning point for me in my freelance career. I was selling my services as I build websites when in fact I did so much more. I helped generate leads, generate business, helped them grow their business, become more professional. So forget about how long it takes and price according to the value your solution provides. An hour spent simply doesn't account for the accrued hours of training, experience knowledge and problem solving skills that you have and you've learned to get to where you are today. But occasionally an hourly charge might be appropriate, especially when both parties acknowledge it's an unpredictable solution requiring an unknown amount of time and resulting in unpredictable price. So in those situations it's okay to charge by price but for the most part I personally charge by project versus an hourly rate. Mistake number two, not keeping an eye on the competition. And maybe you are but there's always room to improve. And some questions to consider. Is your market local, national or international a larger competitive area makes pricing even more challenging? Another consideration are you and your competitors targeting exactly the same audience? Probably not, but something to consider. Is there enough work to go around? Another consideration are competitors offering exactly the same package? Hint, probably not. If you're bundling with other complimentary services such as SEO or copywriting or care plans. And last, what level of customization are you providing? As a custom designer your competition is not a repeat. Not the drag and drop tool. So it's not even those who tout themselves as drag and drop tool experts. That's great advice. It's something that I have to constantly ask myself in my business here. But mistake number three is not knowing exactly what income that you need to cover your expenses. So it helps to know your costs down to the dollar including those one time purchases. And then ongoing expenses. So understand the complete cost of running your business. Everything from hardware and software, both those ongoing at one time like I said. Sales and marketing, insurance, whether it's business, liability or health. Professional fees such as legal and accounting. Those are super important for a business. Licenses, taxes, dues, memberships and subscriptions that you have. Whether for your personal business or if you're offsetting it to your clients. Office space or co-working space depending on what you do in your business here. Or things like training, books, dues and conferences to continuing to learn and improve on your business. But then it's also helpful to consider the level of steady income just required to maintain your standard of living. So this is basic survival costs of rent or mortgage, food, utilities, entertainment, clothing. It's the normal stuff that you may not think about on a day to day. Paying off any extra debt such as college or car loans. Amount that you would put into savings or retirement because as a freelancer, a web pro that is super important to keep top of mind. And if you're supporting a family, add in that childcare, tuition, dance lessons, soccer leagues, whatever it might be the list goes on and on. It helps to create a spreadsheet and just keep everything up to date with all the changing variables of your life. That way you have a goal of what you want to kind of achieve with your business and live comfortably too. Cause you don't want to have just enough to pay off your bills and then your dues. You want to make sure that you're living a happy comfortable life. Which takes us to mistake number four not balancing your income stream. Now most folks start out in this business planning on building sites but that's not 100% reliable income stream mainly because it depends on quite a few variables. Long-term survival involves splitting your income into three strategic buckets. The number one project income, single projects with finite implementation time limit and fixed costs can be a big boost to your bank account but they're unpredictable. Number two, recurring revenue. Clients pay a small to moderate monthly fee for an established service such as like website maintenance for example. And while it's a modest amount per client guaranteed income rolls into your bank account just like clockwork which is nice. You're still doing the work but you're not worrying about sales or marketing to attract new clients for every project. And number three, passive income. So basically you do the work once and you bring in additional income with little effort. And some examples of passive income in case you're wondering include downloadable courses or products. So like for example WordPress themes, eBooks, one of my favorites. And also you have like affiliate links and reseller accounts where basically clients purchase or renew services and then you can continue to receive dividends. Oh man, I love me some recurring revenue. It's great advice there. Mistake number five though is assuming that set packages will work for all clients. And I'm sure you know, the web design is not a one-size-fits-all service. So offering those limited predefined packages while it might sound easy to say, oh yeah, a standard website's $1,500. E-commerce is this much. It puts you in a box and most customers are not getting it that accurate pricing. You'll find yourself with projects that are more time consuming than you anticipated. But crafting a custom proposal lets you demonstrate value and price far more accurately while highlighting your skills and the required effort. And also by offering services to clients in a specific niche, you'll be seen as providing higher value based on your experience and your expertise. Establishing a niche expertise will increase the potential for referred work and many niche markets have their own networking groups and members can count on each other for referrals. Now that you've seen how easy it is to sabotage your pricing, revise your focus to create a recipe for success. And when it's all said and done, it literally plays to plan and strategize your pricing. But also it removes the guesswork and stress and leads to ethical rates. And a more accurate pricing, well, it allows you to be fairly compensated for your amazing work that you're doing and that you're delivering. But hey, we've got over 200 videos on all things to help you with your small business. Make sure you like, comment and subscribe. But this is The Journey. We'll see you next time.