Brief Summary
This video explains how freelancers, particularly designers and developers, can increase their earnings by reframing their work and highlighting its value. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the perceived value of services, creating detailed scopes of work, and focusing on the client's success to justify higher prices.
- Avoid simply selling a service; focus on the value and outcomes for the client.
- Create detailed scopes of work to showcase the comprehensive nature of your services.
- Frame your services around the client's success and long-term revenue growth.
Getting Paid More as Freelancers
Many designers want to earn more but often undermine themselves, leading clients to take advantage. The key to charging more lies in framing your work correctly. By addressing a crucial mistake in how you present your services, you can significantly increase your income.
Pricing Mistake in Freelance
The video addresses a common pricing mistake made by freelancers. Understanding and rectifying this mistake is crucial for increasing earnings. The video uses the example of cheesecake sales to illustrate how to properly frame the value of your work.
Cheesecake Example
A cheesecake priced at $8 is used as an example to explain value framing. The ingredients might only cost $3, leading some to believe the price is a ripoff. However, the price covers more than just the ingredients, including the cafe's overhead costs like rent, employees, and utilities. The framing of the cheesecake as part of a larger experience justifies the price.
Blueprint
The concepts discussed are a small part of the Squareblock blueprint, which includes documents, templates, and guides for building a high-earning freelance or agency business. The price of the blueprint is set to increase soon.
Value of a Cheesecake
Framing the cheesecake as simply an $8 item may lead to complaints about the price. Similarly, a $2,500 website design can be perceived as expensive if not properly framed. The cheesecake's existence is justified by upsells, such as drinks, where the margins are higher. Customers are not just buying a cheesecake; they are buying a good time, of which the cheesecake is just one element.
Scope of Work Tutorial
Clients assess the value of a product or service to determine if the price is justified. Many designers oversimplify pricing, for example, by listing "no code development and design of a landing page" for $2,500. The problem with selling a website as a service is that the price is decreasing due to competition and readily available tools. To avoid this, create a scope of work document that highlights the value you provide.
The design or development part is just a small component of the overall value. The best scopes of work are detailed, listing everything you do in the process to give the client a better understanding of what they are paying for. Position your services around the value to the end client. Avoid simply adjusting a template for the client; instead, conduct research, including competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation, and feedback review.
Create a mood board, a strategy document (pre-launch, post-launch, and during design), and outline the client's goals and potential solutions. Annotate your design to show how it solves those goals and benefits the client, such as increasing registrations, clients, and revenue. Plan for tweaks, tests, and adjustments to ensure the client's success. Frame your work around the client's success, focusing on iterative website design that grows their revenue, leading to long-term relationships and continued payments.
Frame for More Money
When your scope of work is clear and demonstrates how you help clients earn more money, they will be happy to pay you more. For long-term clients, consider creating hard cover books that explain their branding in detail during a rebranding or redesign.
Pro Tip
Giving clients something unexpected, like a physical book in a digital world, is appreciated and adds to the perceived value. These gestures help retain clients for many years, as they continue to pay for the value and extras provided.
Take Action!
You can use the free information shared to create your own patterns, documents, templates, and strategies, although it may take more time. Regardless of your approach, remember that you deserve to earn more money, so take action to increase your rates.
