Building a successful business is all about adding value to your customers, pricing that value accordingly and then optimising your processes internally so that you can deliver that value at a profit. Mason James from WP Valet has done this very well and tells us how in this episode of the WP Elevation podcast.
I'm giving away a copy of 'The Dip' by Seth Godin. Simply tell us your biggest success or biggest challenge with value-based pricing - getting away from your hourly rate, and if this is important to you. Leave your comment below and we'll get Mason back in a few weeks to award the prize.
Congratulations Yael! Mason has chosen you as the podcast prize winner. (Sept '14)
Some of the highlights of this episode include:
Elevation Round Answers
Here are Mason’s answers to the questions in our Elevation round. Watch the interview to get the full scoop.
You can reach out and thank Mason James on @masonjames.
Mason suggested I interview Vid Luther from Pressable. Vid, keep your eyes on your inbox.
Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below and tell Mason and my good self the biggest challenge or the biggest success you’ve had with value-based pricing.
10 Responses
Great episode! Mason really talks some sense about how its like to run a WordPress support business. I also enjoyed his remarks about proposal that were filled with commonsense.
I’ve been working with value based pricing since jumping into WP Elevation. While I have continued to increase my rates and my skill set, I know that I am still not fully incorporating value based pricing. And I think this is because I’m still not completely skilled in transitioning a potential client from thinking in terms of expense versus investment. How many times have we as web designer / developers been asked casually, Hey I want a website, how much will it cost? As if a website is like buying a loaf of bread. A website is not a commodity; it is a tool in the clients over all business plan and business goals. But, still, many potential clients come thinking in terms of commodity versus investment. How to shift that conversation? I’m getting better at it with the skills I’ve learned on WP Elevation and the initial consulation, but it’s still a challenge for me. Another great interview, Troy. Love the practical down to earth nuggets in this one. Thank you.
Nice interview Mason!! 🙂
Since beginning my journey as a web developer I’ve always tried to steer clients towards project pricing as opposed to an hourly rate however my project pricing was never quite in line with value based pricing, I feel there was always probably a bit more margin to have.
Now that I’m moving into ongoing monthly contracts with clients for support and maintenance I’m finding myself slipping back into the hourly rate trap for small tasks. The challenge I have now is to reposition my business / value to clients so that I can charge a much higher monthly fee and get out of charging by the hour and include it all within the monthly contract.
I’m late in seeing this – but thanks, Jonathan 🙂 Troy made this session so enjoyable for me and I’m glad some of it was useful!
We’re all in that boat, Yael. I’m still honing my skills at steering the conversation in that direction and spotting the red flags when we start to go down the rabbit trail of costs vs value.
Keep at it! Having regular points to review/check how you’re doing and having someone else to hold you to it is helpful as well 🙂 WP Elevation works great for both of those reasons!
Thanks! 😀
We slipped back into that same trap at the end of last year. I was convinced that taking the small tasks and tracking them hourly was the way to go. Good grief, we spent 6 painful months trying to make it work and then 2 months fixing the damage after that. Having a customer by a block of “custom development” without correlating it to specific hours is helpful. That way you can still charge when there’s work that’s outside their monthly scope, but not revert everything back to ‘hourly’.
Side note: if you are doing hourly – debugging code is way more challenging and should be charged at a premium of your regular development rates.
Congratulations Yael! Mason has awarded you the podcast prize winner!
We’ll be in touch shortly to organise the details!