If there's one piece of advice I give everyone, it's "Charge More"
If you run a service business, especially one that is purely dependent on your expertise and knowledge, pricing can seem like a dark art. It's dependent on a number of factors, but the most important one is your own sense of self-worth.
Remember - you're charging for your expertise. You're an expert. As the saying goes, you're worth it.
However, before you can come up with a price, you need to know your costs. And here's a simple way to figure that out.
Firstly, let's look at what you need to earn. This is what you need to cover your mortgage, food bills, and everything else that you can't do without.
Secondly, let's look at your want to earn. This is where you want to be, maybe in a years' time, maybe in five. But it's important to know this.
Next up, think about how many clients you can have on the go at any one time. For me, that's a maximum of four at once - and given a project can be anything from a couple of months to a year, that gives me around 8-12 clients per year.
Now look at your need to earn figure and divide it by that number of clients. There's your basic cost - the minimum you can afford to charge.
Repeat for your want to earn figure. There's your ideal price - what you want to be charging to hit your goals.
That wasn't so hard was it?