I recently told BL, a colleague, that I was pretty busy with
\ncopywriting assignments (I usually am).<\/p>\n
Like so many people, he immediately said, “You should raise your
\nprices!”<\/p>\n
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I replied.<\/p>\n
Like BL, many people say you should raise your prices when you
\nare so busy with orders at your current prices that you can’t
\ntake on any more business.<\/p>\n
The logic is that being so busy gives you leverage to make prices
\nhigher, because if some customers balk at the new higher price
\ntags, you can afford to let them walk, being as busy and
\nsuccessful as you are.<\/p>\n
However, I don’t see being busy as an opportunity to charge more
\n… for 2 reasons.<\/p>\n
First, it’s a form of price gouging.<\/p>\n
Some of those who tell me to raise my prices, in particular BL
\nand other top people in my fields of copywriting and info
\nmarketing, prefer to always extract as much money from every
\nclient as they can.<\/p>\n
They firmly believe you should always charge every customer as
\nmuch as you can — as much as they possibly can afford to pay.<\/p>\n
I do not agree.<\/p>\n
I prefer to charge a fair and reasonable price for the products
\nand services I provide.<\/p>\n
But not more than that.<\/p>\n
I know I don’t like it when a vendor — even one in high demand
\nand therefore arguably in a positon of power — squeezes me for
\nevery last dime they can get.<\/p>\n
If you don’t like when sellers charge you outrageously high fees,
\nrest assured your customers don’t like it either.<\/p>\n
And I won’t do unto my clients what I don’t want others to do
\nunto me.<\/p>\n
Even if it’s perfectly legal to do so, it is at best unkindly and
\nat worst morally reprehensible to take buyers for every last
\nnickel they have.<\/p>\n
Like the pharmaceutical executive who overnight raised the price
\nof the life-saving drug, which only his firm could supply,
\ntenfold … so that many chronically ill people who needed it to
\nlive could no longer afford to buy it.<\/p>\n
In the lending industry, you can’t just charge any interest rates
\nyou want. The rate is limited by law.<\/p>\n
To make loans above the legal rate limit is called “usury” or
\ncharging “usurious” rates.<\/p>\n
And usury is actually a crime.<\/p>\n
Second, charging prices that are affordable to your customers is
\nnot only appreciated by them — it’s also good for your customer
\nretention rate, repeat business, referrals, reputation, and
\nreorders.<\/p>\n
DM, another colleague, once said to me that if a freelance direct
\nresponse copywriter (which DM was) charged an outrageously high
\nfee … and the promotion she wrote was anything other than a
\ngrand-slam home run …<\/p>\n
… the client would resent the gouging, and never hire that
\nfreelance writer again … which had in fact happened in the case
\nof the other writer we were discussing, who had just done this
\nwith one of DM’s clients.<\/p>\n
Years ago, GD, a pricing consultant, told me that in a service
\nbusiness, you should charge a price in the middle of the top
\nthird of providers.<\/p>\n
His logic was as follows:<\/p>\n
If your fee is in the bottom third, prospects assume you aren’t
\nany good.<\/p>\n
After all, if you were any good, you would be charging more,
\nright?<\/p>\n
GD also said that if you charged in the middle third, again you
\nwould be viewed as midlevel in talent and skills — and prospects
\nwant the best service provider, not a mediocre one.<\/p>\n
So your price should be in the upper third of the cost spectrum.<\/p>\n
But, if it’s at the extreme top of the upper third, your price is
\nthen so high that you make difficult for clients to give you
\nrepeat business.<\/p>\n
Because your prices are so high, clients cringe whenever you
\nquote a fee … and begin looking for another good professional who
\ncharges perhaps a bit less.<\/p>\n
However, if your clients like you and your work, and you charge
\nin the middle of the top third, they will pay what you ask — and
\nnot run every time you send an estimate to get other quotes.<\/p>\n
And if you can get top dollar without losing clients by pricing
\nin the middle of the top third, there is no reason to lower your
\nfees to the bottom of the top third, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently told BL, a colleague, that I was pretty busy with copywriting assignments (I usually am). Like so many people, he immediately said, “You should raise your prices!” “Thanks, but no thanks,” I replied. Like BL, many people say you should raise your prices when you are so busy with orders at your current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1342,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions\/1342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}