Making sure your price is right

One of my clients under-priced on a piece of work the other day.  Her customer emailed her to thank her for the job and suggested that he pay her £600 instead of the £400 she had quoted.

It would be lovely if we all had customers who were this honest and thoughtful. But most of us don't have this luxury and we have to guess at our pricing.

This is particularly true for creative businesses: the web designers, coders, architects, copywriters, and photographers of Brighton and Hove.

Setting the right price is one of the things that I work on a lot with clients. Over the past 14 years of helping hundreds of businesses in the city, I've probably seen two where their pricing has been too high. That's right, just two. Pretty much everyone else's prices have been too low.

And that means that they've not been making enough money. Which is where I start to thump my fist on the table and insist that businesses charge better prices, because I see far too many companies where the owner is not making enough money to live a decent life - or is kept awake at night worrying about cashflow.

I'll be running a workshop on pricing for creative businesses on Thursday (February 19), as part of the Brighton Chamber's Ride the Wave programme.

If you run a creative business and you want to find out how to set your prices at the right level - so you don't scare clients, but you do get paid for the beautiful work you're doing - then do come along. I'll be taking you through how much you need to charge, how you can introduce this with clients, and how to negotiate a deal. If you'd like to come along, you can book a place at www.businessinbrighton.co.uk.