Pricing People Out

For the first time I quoted someone out of my market. It wasn't that I didn't want to work with them. In fact I've been working on securing the client for some time.

My pricing wasn't me being greedy. It was me trying to be realistic with the amount of work I put into an edit and the time I had available.

In fact it was me trying to establish my value as a content editor.

I had under sold myself time and time again to get to a position where I thought I could be competitive in the market. Much of this comes from the research I had done looking at competitors and what I brought to the table with my personal touches of:

• keeping the customer included in the process
• openness
• transparency

To some this is something they value. These are the people that have held onto editing their projects evaluate they like the "total control" over their work. To them I am a middle of the road. I'm not someone who can do it better, I'm someone who can do it close enough to how they would have done it.

To the ones that can't be bothered to do it themselves I'm just the option they chose.

Neither one of these is the "dream" client that I've had in my mind. The person that listened to the latest [PIT Podcast] and said "wow 😮! This guy edits his own stuff and it sounds amazing!! (Although at times I know it's merely passable). He obviously loves doing this and I want him to show that same love and care on my content."

But I have something very special. I have creators that, over time, come to appreciate not just the work that I do for them but the willingness to provide feedback on how they can improve their process. People that I talk not just about podcasting or course creating but cross industry marketing strategies that allow you to grow your network but also not be disgusting about it. People that trust me to develop per customer processes and templates and share them with my clients so if they choose they could do the work themselves or (God forbid) take the work I've done and hand it to someone cheaper and have them do it for the rates I started at.

There's a [great video] that mentions how to come up with pricing for service work. I do believe I've reached a price point I'm comfortable charging my clients. But now I need to put the pieces in motion to start finding and landing more folks like them.