It took me 20 years to figure out how to price the right way.
When I started out as a freelancer in 1991, I had no clue, no context, and no clarity on how to price my creative work. I figured it out along the way.
I experimented with everything: charging by the hour, basing prices on pure guesses and gut instincts, or bidding on projects without the full scope of work entailed.
Every time I priced my work, I basically took wild guesses. Not surprisingly, these tactics didn't last long.
When I first opened Blind in 1995, I thought I had a good grasp on how to price creative services. But something was still missing.
It wasn't until I met a producer in Los Angeles who showed me his bidding spreadsheet where everything clicked. It was a major epiphany and turning point in my career.
I realized all the things I wasn't charging for, like computers, meals, project management, client communication, or hiring freelancers. I never considered charging for everything I was responsible for on top of the creative work.
I learned that if I wanted my business to continue growing, I had to charge more. I figured out what was enough for our business to profit and scale over time.
I learned how to determine what was valuable to clients and price accordingly.
Our studio started earning big-budget projects worth over a million dollars. Blind became one of the more successful studios in the competitive market of LA.
It took me two decades of experimenting and refining my pricing structure to get it right, but it shouldn't for you. Inside Painless Pricing, I'm showing you everything I've learned about pricing creativity: from the mistakes I made as a freelancer to the wins my team and I at Blind achieved with globally-recognized clients.
I'll teach you the range of ways to charge, from hourly estimates to project rates, and how to price the client—not the work you do.
You'll finally know what works for your business so you can price your work the right way and make more money doing what you love.