Respect Yourself and Charge What You Are Worth
It doesn’t matter if you are a mommy blogger selling a couple of ad spaces and writing product reviews or if you are a small business owner. Pricing your services to reflect their true worth can be a challenge.
From the rates charged, it is apparent that many mommy bloggers and small business owners think that low prices are the only way to attract more buyers. Other times, as in my case just a year ago, low prices reflect an insecurity regarding the quality of the service being provided.
There are several problems with being the lowest priced provider of your service or product.
- Low prices dilute the value for everyone else – if enough providers are charging a rate that is much lower than the product or service is worth, the common perception will be that the rates that reflect true value are grossly overpriced.
- Low prices attract bargain shoppers – bargain shoppers are looking for the best deal and will often ask you to reduce your already rock-bottom prices; they tend to nitpick everything and are much harder to please than people who are understand the value of and are willing to pay for your product or service.
- Low prices mean you have to make more sales to reach your financial goals – it’s simple math; fewer sales of a higher-priced product will equal the revenue generated by more sales of a lower-priced product.
- Low prices create a perception of lesser quality – even if your product or service is the highest quality, people automatically assume that a lower price means an inferior product; low prices can actually discourage people from doing business with you because of this perception.
Over at The Girl Revolution, Tracee is challenging mommy bloggers to respect themselves enough to charge prices that reflect what their services are truly worth. I think that everyone, not just mommy bloggers, needs to read her two posts about this topic: 10 Reasons Mommy Bloggers Are Broke and 10 Reasons Mommy Bloggers Deserve Condescension from the New York Times. The lists are applicable to anyone who is not charging what their services are worth.
What are you waiting for? Click the button below to read what Tracee has to say and take her challenge.
5 Comments
Category: General
Thank you Revka.
It’s true. This does not only impact Mommy Bloggers. It impacts almost every creative profession I can think of. Think writers: pay your dues, work for clips and samples, starving artist, etc.
It feels just awful to feel our value is virtually nothing. It made me think today about the biblical truth:
Ask and it shall be given.
Telling someone our fee is the “ask.” Just praying about it and hoping it falls out of the sky is not so much “asking” as hoping.
And to designers. I know many men designers who self-trained. They make money. They feel worthy of asking for it.
We have to change this.
I was more than happy to help spread the word, and I think we should all be thanking you, Tracee, for throwing down the gauntlet and forcing us to re-evaluate our rates.
I love how you applied the “ASK” principle, and the longer I am in business, the more true I find it to be:
~ want people to subscribe to your newsletter? ASK
~ want people to buy from you? ASK them to buy.
~ want people to buy more products from you? ASK them to buy more by offering upsells and cross-sells
~ want people to pay you what you are worth? ASK them to pay what you are worth, and don’t take no for an answer.
Your point about men designers naturally expecting to be paid fair rates for their services is quite true. Why do we women expect less for ourselves?
WOW. I have just started out selling my design services even though I hold a degree in graphic design.
I truly don’t feel that I am charging what I am worth at this time. I try to tell myself that I am doing this to get clientele, but I would not work any job outside of my home for the amount I am charging now.
I was recently unemployed and hope to get this off the ground to replace my unemployment. But truly I should be charging what I am worth.
Jessica @ designs by iDesign´s last blog ..Moving From Blogger to WordPress
It’s hard, isn’t it, Jessica, to charge what you are worth? I’m still learning this lesson, and I hope this post helps you to learn it much more quickly than I have.
Go ahead and raise your rates. You’ll be surprised at the positive effect that will have on your business if your current rates are lower than they should be.
Start out right, and let me know if I can help you in any way.
[...] Respect Yourself and Charge What You Are Worth – This is so hard. I struggle with this all the time right now with my new design job. I have a habit of selling myself short and not charging what I should. I try to remind myself that my time not paying attention to my boys is worth so much more. [...]