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Discussion on: Help! I have my first client

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Dan Silcox

Two basic pricing approaches at a really high level are:

  1. "Cost Plus" based - so you figure out what it costs you to do this stuff (including your time of course) and then use this to figure out a price that gives you a sensible profit that actually makes your business sustainable and makes it actually worth doing
  2. "Perceived Value" based - you work out the value you are adding to your client's life / business and use this as the basis for your price. For example if they are going to use your app to double their revenue this year, that's a lot of benefit!

I am certainly no expert on this stuff, but from your example I'd say maybe something sensible would be using a cost-based approach for the ongoing server costs etc, and a value-based approach for the initial project - and maybe a hybrid for any changes / maintenance etc depending on their scope.

Hope this gives food for thought - this is kind of a TL;DR version of this ConvertKit article convertkit.com/stop-worrying-about... which itself is worth a read :)

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Jaimie Carter • Edited

Thanks Dan. Yeah, I used to make records (yes, the black discs with a hole in the middle) a thousand years ago, and as a producer you'd use a combination of these methods, even back then. I guess what I was wondering is: is there and industry standard costing structure? Seems there isn't, and that's good to know.