It’s true — well-prepared, aesthetically-presented sushi is not cheap. But why should it be?

When you choose to go to a nice sushi restaurant, you’re not just paying for the base ingredients in the food. You’re paying for the overall value you receive. The quality of the food, the experience you receive in the restaurant, and even the chef’s expertise in how to properly prepare sushi (a craft in and of itself) are all part of what you pay for at this type of restaurant.

Similarly, although We’ve been taught as freelancers to think that the way to price ourselves is per hour or per project, we should be thinking of value-based pricing instead.

This is actually a more accurate pricing system for freelancers, because once you take all of your client interactions, past experiences, applied efforts, and end results into account (not to mention the quality of your work), you’re no longer dealing with just minutes of your life.

You’re dealing with a person whose services are more valuable than a clock can determine.

Time-Based Pricing Only Goes So Far

At the beginning of your freelancing career, pricing your services according to time makes sense. After all, it’s easier to keep track of your business expenses and income down to the last cent, and helps you figure out your work habits, like how long it typically takes you to finish a project.

Time-based pricing also keeps you well aware of those bills starting to stack up.

But there comes a point where those bills start to pay themselves off more consistently, and you’re not as worried about making ends meet. You realize you need to start earning more, so you can take your business to the next level.

This is when you need to pay attention to your value and not just “what it takes to make it.”

Sure, you can keep telling yourself that it makes sense to charge per hour because you’re still earning what you need to live, and all you need to do to earn more is charge more so you have a higher hourly rate. And of course you can keep telling yourself that it’s okay to provide a quote based on how long you think the project will take you.

But you’ll just be delaying the inevitable meltdown.

Unfortunately, freelancers who make the common pricing mistake of charging per hour tend to run themselves into the ground, because they’re the ones most likely to undervalue their own work. They think, “If I want to make this much, I should work this many hours, so the project’s worth this much.” They position themselves as nothing more than the individual parts that make up their services, like sushi’s ingredients versus the entire sushi restaurant experience.

This often means they get stuck with trying to finish a project within the timeframe they quoted to avoid it lowering their hourly rate, or having to deal with clients who try to push them to provide extra services free of charge (scope creep). Or, even worse, they have to deal with the fact that the client could have paid them a lot more money because their work provided so much value.

As an example, let’s say your typical rate is $75 an hour, and you think a client’s project will take you 30 hours, so you charge $2250. But what if the project actually ends up being worth far more than that to your client, say, $5000? You would have lost over $2700, more than double your quote for this client.

You don’t want to deal with this your entire life, do you?

Then start paying attention to value.

Figure out what to charge based on the value you’ll provide to your clients. Be aware this value could look different to each one; a 30-hour project may only be worth $5000 to one client while another would gladly pay upwards of $25,000.

This is why pricing on value, instead of an hourly rate, is so vital . It’s your “get out of jail free” card.

There’s a Value to Value (Seriously)

“Now wait a minute,” you might be saying. “Who’s going to pay for some hypothetical value I claim I can offer clients?”

You’d be surprised how much people are willing to pay for value. If something’s hard to obtain, make, or duplicate, it’s considered valuable, exclusive almost, and people want it. That’s why they pay out the butt for diamond engagement rings, and it’s also why foodies are willing to plop down a good chunk of cash for an unforgettable sushi experience.

Just as people will pay for value, so will clients.

This means you need to stop thinking of your services as the amount of time you put into them, and instead think in terms of the overall value they will bring to your client.

If you’ve got that track record of providing useful ideas to your clients which they implement and consequently earn more than expected, you’d be surprised how many people will want to hire you when you position yourself as a freelancer who brings results and value no one else can. After all, you’re basically providing them a diamond ring or really good sushi in a really nice restaurant.

You wouldn’t want to undercharge for those items, just like you wouldn’t with your own services.

Don’t Underestimate the Value of Your Services

If you’re still worried about switching to value-based pricing, cut it out.

You do need to pay your bills, of course, but you also need to treat yourself like a professional if you expect others to do the same.

Once you’ve paid your dues with time-based pricing, sit down and analyze everything you’ve learned about yourself, your business, and your clients. Price your services based on the value you’re bringing to them, and they’ll gladly refer you to new ones who will pay the fees you’re asking. In other words, your name will start going around as the expert freelancer people are looking for.

However, don’t accept an offer you know isn’t worth your time or stress. If a client wants you to design a website for $20,000, for example, but they have demands you think are going to take you a lot longer than a typical $20k contract looks like for you, negotiate what you can offer them value-wise for that price. If they don’t like it and still want to undervalue you, just move on. Some other client will be more than happy to accept that same offer.

If you treat yourself like a professional and value your work, clients will be coming to you, and the fear of moving to value-based pricing won’t have been justified in the least.

Make the Transition to Value-Based Pricing

Just like a sushi chef has to continually practice making high-quality sushi, it takes time and experience (and less and less instances of you doubting yourself) before you’ll figure out how to better price the value of your freelance services.

That’s okay, as long as you make the transition from time-based pricing to value-based, because staying in the time-based system is just silly if you’re serious about your work.

Once you’ve made the transition, don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re less than your asking price. You’re a professional with your own business, after all, and a valuable one at that.

The post How Value-Based Pricing Will Make Clients Beg You to Work for Them appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

But they could just be hiding one of our biggest flaws: unimpressive, flat writing.

Sure, we talk a lot about typography and how it affects the reader, but how often do we pay attention to the words beneath those letters? How often do we study the art of writing for online readers? If you’re in the business of providing web copy along with your design, these are questions you can’t afford to ignore.

What Online Readers Want

Copyblogger’s Jon Morrow, one of the most successful bloggers of our time, learned about writing for online readers the hard way. He studied in English literature and communication in college, acing most of his courses and graduating with a GPA of 3.921.

But guess what? Not only did he forget 95% of what he learned, he also had to re-wire his entire brain to learn how to write for online readers instead of academics and scholars.

Morrow learned that online readers are a different breed from other types of readers. They’ve developed a taste for a specific writing style, and they’ve
come to expect it when they’re browsing online because they’re in a hurry and have lots of demands on their attention. Online readers don’t want Shakespeare; they want scannable, easy-to-follow writing.

Because of these expectations, web designers can’t assume readers will ignore bad writing if there’s a pretty design in front of their faces. That’s like saying a restaurant’s customers won’t notice a raw steak if you make it look really fancy and serve it on a gold dish.

If you want to attract and keep more visitors (who could be potential clients), you need to understand what they want to see from your copywriting, then deliver it to them.

How to Write for Online Readers

There are two basic things to remember when writing for online readers: formatting and style.

Formatting is how your words physically look like on the page, and style is the way you choose to write (cryptic, we know, but we’ll explain later).

Content plays a big role, too, but the immediate goal is to get visitors interested in reading in the first place. If your writing looks disorganized or is too Shakespearean, you’ll lose their interest, and your content, no matter how good, won’t get a glimpse.

Let’s look at formatting first:

1. Think visuals and spacing: This shouldn’t be hard – you’re a web designer, after all.
   Your writing and words need to have a visually appealing layout, which includes double-spacing between paragraphs and the use of sub-heads to break things up into separate sections. And keep text left-aligned; your online readers will thank you for it.
2. Focus on font: Feel free to choose creative fonts in your design, but on your page copy, keep things simple with a readable choice like Arial or Georgia. Some designers argue for sans serif font vs. serif, but the choice is ultimately up to you.
   Also, pick a font that’s large enough to be viewed on any device; the general recommendation is to start at 14px. The point of writing copy is for it to get read, not for online readers to squint at it because it’s too small.
3. Shorten your paragraphs: No online reader wants to slog through paragraphs that span 5-7 lines. Keep it simple with 3-5 sentences, max.
   How short is too short? Online, even one sentence counts as a paragraph (despite what your English teachers taught you).
4. Liven things up: Even with good visuals, font, and paragraphs, text can look very “blah” without some extra oomph.
   Use bold font to highlight key ideas, and italics for specific emphasis.
   Always format lists with bullet points, and try including them every time you write. Don’t forget to indent your lists, too (if it’s not done automatically).

Online readers love all this extra flair — it makes your text scannable and consumable when they’re in a hurry (remember earlier how we said that’s one thing they look for?).

You may have noticed that this post has so far included everything we just mentioned about formatting. If you’ve gotten this far, the formatting probably played a large part in keeping your attention.

Now let’s move on to style, and explain what we meant by “the way you choose to write”:

1. Write conversationally: Jon Morrow found out professors want academic writing, but online readers want conversational writing. They don’t want to be written to like they’re a robot.
   Imagine you’re talking to a friend to accomplish this style. Use active voice and lively language.
   Avoid terms your readers may not know. Since you’re probably used to reading technical, design language, it could take some practice for you to write “looser.”
2. Meet your readers where they are: You’ll need to study your readers for a while to know what they respond to, but always try to write at their level. Never above and never below — you’ll always come across as arrogant and patronizing if you do.
3. Use humor occasionally: Humor always goes far with online readers. Your grammar may be messed up here and there but no one will (or should) care if you’re hilarious.
   Just make sure not to overdo it. You don’t want your readers to think, “I was looking for a web designer, not a comedian!”
4. Just be you: Writing style can also be defined as the way a writer reveals his/her personality. This doesn’t come naturally for everyone, so finding your voice in writing may take a while.
   You’ll find that the more you write, the more comfortable you’ll become and the more likely your voice will reveal itself. You can also take some steps to being more creative if you feel this is a limitation.

How Writing for Online Readers Will Create More Leads

The art of writing for online readers becomes simpler when you know their expectations. They want scannable, easy-to-read writing that doesn’t smell of Shakespeare in the least. It may take a little extra work, but your reward for your efforts will be loyal readers and clients wanting to hire you instead of that designer next door (digitally, of course), whose writing is… well, bland.

However, if you just don’t feel up for writing your own content or providing that service to your clients, don’t hesitate to hire the job out to a copywriter whose work you admire. You want to make sure you’re always presenting your online readers with quality, whether that be your design work or your words, or someone else’s words.

And when you offer great designs with scannable, easy-to-read writing, it just makes sense that you’ll gain more traffic, more readers, and more leads.

Of course, this gets into aspects of lead generation, landing pages, A/B testing, and lots of other back-end stuff… but what do all these have in common besides page design?

Words.

So make sure they’re good ones.

The post Don’t Copy Shakespeare – The Art of Writing for Online Readers appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.