What’s your worth?

How to charge for your services/products and stay competitive in the market. 

After all the marketing and preparation you finally have interested leads who are begging you to sell them a product or provide a service for them.  Your foot is in the door and beyond but when it comes to setting a fee, how do you know what to charge?  You don’t want to sell yourself short and you don’t want to charge too much either.  Ideally consumers shop for the best services rather than by price, but realistically only a few consumers shop by quality.  Many consumers are bargain hunters.  Of course this is different for every single industry and it doesn't apply to everyone.  But the question still stands, how do you set a rate/fee/price?  Of course you can do your research and see what your competitors are offering, what your current customers are willing to pay and how much demand there is for your product or service. 

How to figure out what to charge for a service?  In my opinion it is a little bit more confusing and nerve-wrecking to figure service fees because there is no obvious expense to cover.  When selling products you first have to cover production, packaging, etc but with a service where is the start line?  I have found a very interesting and helpful forum with valuable information for those of you who are starting up or reinventing their business.  http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?389195-How-to-determine-what-to-charge-a-client

They bring up:

• Estimating the scope
• Fixed price vs hour by hour
• Figuring out the hourly rate
• Methods to figure out the hourly price:
• Value based pricing
• Result based pricing

I’m very interested to know, as a start-up, what helped you decide what your rates/price/fee would be?  Did you have to adjust your rates over time?

~Till next time,

Nancy Valdez

www.AustinsVA.com