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I highly recommend this book. The author, Jonathan Stark, really knows his stuff when it comes to pricing. His advice on value based pricing has changed the way

I highly recommend this book. The author, Jonathan Stark, really knows his stuff when it comes to pricing. His advice on value based pricing has changed the way I approach some parts of my business.

dalke 10y ago
It comes across as one of those "we know the secret to losing weight", that then go on and on about how much better you'll feel once you lost weight. It never tells you how, only asking for your money in exchange for the secret. I've done work fixed-priced work, hourly work, and product sales. The most profitable of these has been on-site, short-term fixed-time contracts. That is, I go to a client's site for 1-2 weeks and work on a problem they have, customized for their site. (I haven't done a subscription service, because I develop software for pharmaceutical R&D, and pharmas regard their data and even user queries to non-proprietary data sets as highly proprietary.) I also know what my clients and customers in my field are willing to pay. Why should I believe that this author knows my field better than I do? The link uses the phrase "effective hourly rate of $2000+ per hour". That "effective" is suspiciously hand-wavy. It's like saying that if I do 5 hours of sales and marketing work to sell a product for $10,000 that took me 1 year to develop, then the additional sales and marketing to get to that sale is "effectively" $2,000/hour. It also reminds me of the guy who says he only works one hour per week, then to learn he spends his entire waking life hustling, but only calls part of it "work." The link says: "As long as you bill yourself out by the hour, your clients will treat you as labor. Hired help. A pair of hands to be directed. " WTF? This stinks of classism. We are labor. We are members of the working class. But master laborers from any field, whether carpenters, programmers, or rocket designers, are not "a pair of hands to be directed" any more than the VP of, say, a marketing company. > "Right now, the book is a little over 100 pages" I don't like that tally. When I look at the book pages screenshot with 111 pages, I see that 25 are single page chapter headings. It also looks like it has high line spacing and wide margins, which are common techniques to inflate the page count. With that wariness in mind, would you care to explain what changed in your pricing model and why the other parts of the model didn't change? What is your "effective hourly rate", and what does "effective" mean to you?
- jonathanstark 10y ago
  Hi! Author here. Thanks for your comment :) I was preparing to answer your questions and then I read that you consider yourself a laborer. If you see yourself as a laboror, my book is definitely not for you. If at some point in the future you start to feel like you've maxed out your annual income and don't know what to do about it, you might want to revisit the idea of ditching hourly billing. Cheers! —J
  - dalke 10y ago
    It's clear now that you use "laborer" as a slur. My extended family is not so far out of poverty that such class warfare snobbery appeals to me. You are not using the normal definition of "laborer". Merriam-Webster defines it as "a person who does hard physical work for money". Wikipedia defines it as "a person who works in one of the construction trades, traditionally considered unskilled manual labor, as opposed to skilled labor." Neither you nor I mean that definition of laborer. I believe you use it as a metaphorical slur. Rather than use that interpretaion, I decided to use the more common Marxist analysis of calling those who labor, including skilled laborers like programmers, the proletariat. Your secret sauce is likely to encourage people to become capitalists, perhaps a rentier capitalist, and thereby join the bourgeoisie class. Marx pointed out the petite bourgeoisie, of which we are members for I both consult and sell software, are more likely to identify with the haute bourgeoisie; those who truly control capital. But I prefer to identify with craft-based workers (and unlike the old AFL policy, promote labor solidarity over trade separatism; though free education/training and strong social services). Now, I agree with Piketty that capital return is greater than the rate of economic growth, so if your proposal is that people should become capitalists, the you are right. But we cannot all become capitalists. That's why, to resolve the dilemma of the categorical imperative, I support a progressive global wealth tax. As an observation, many people running a con choose marks who already half-believe in the con. The ones who follow up on a Nigerian prince scam are those who want to believe. Your last paragraph follows the same lines of only trying to convince those who want to believe you are right. If my guess is correct, and since I don't think a Marxist analysis like this is flawed, I think it's a shame that you find yourself needing to use these tactics for something I don't think is a scam. Rather than trying to understand your ideas through promotional materials, I hoped to get some input from jagthedrummer, who it seems has found that they are not applicable to part of a business. I'm curious to know both the success and failures. jagthedrummer? Care to speak up?, since the author thinks I'm not worthy of his time.

I highly recommend this book. The author, Jonathan Stark, really knows his stuff when it comes to pricing. His advice on value based pricing has changed the way I approach some parts of my business.

dalke 10y ago

It comes across as one of those "we know the secret to losing weight", that then go on and on about how much better you'll feel once you lost weight. It never tells you how, only asking for your money in exchange for the secret. I've done work fixed-priced work, hourly work, and product sales. The most profitable of these has been on-site, short-term fixed-time contracts. That is, I go to a client's site for 1-2 weeks and work on a problem they have, customized for their site. (I haven't done a subscription service, because I develop software for pharmaceutical R&D, and pharmas regard their data and even user queries to non-proprietary data sets as highly proprietary.) I also know what my clients and customers in my field are willing to pay. Why should I believe that this author knows my field better than I do? The link uses the phrase "effective hourly rate of $2000+ per hour". That "effective" is suspiciously hand-wavy. It's like saying that if I do 5 hours of sales and marketing work to sell a product for $10,000 that took me 1 year to develop, then the additional sales and marketing to get to that sale is "effectively" $2,000/hour. It also reminds me of the guy who says he only works one hour per week, then to learn he spends his entire waking life hustling, but only calls part of it "work." The link says: "As long as you bill yourself out by the hour, your clients will treat you as labor. Hired help. A pair of hands to be directed. " WTF? This stinks of classism. We are labor. We are members of the working class. But master laborers from any field, whether carpenters, programmers, or rocket designers, are not "a pair of hands to be directed" any more than the VP of, say, a marketing company. > "Right now, the book is a little over 100 pages" I don't like that tally. When I look at the book pages screenshot with 111 pages, I see that 25 are single page chapter headings. It also looks like it has high line spacing and wide margins, which are common techniques to inflate the page count. With that wariness in mind, would you care to explain what changed in your pricing model and why the other parts of the model didn't change? What is your "effective hourly rate", and what does "effective" mean to you?

jonathanstark 10y ago
Hi! Author here. Thanks for your comment :) I was preparing to answer your questions and then I read that you consider yourself a laborer. If you see yourself as a laboror, my book is definitely not for you. If at some point in the future you start to feel like you've maxed out your annual income and don't know what to do about it, you might want to revisit the idea of ditching hourly billing. Cheers! —J
- dalke 10y ago
  It's clear now that you use "laborer" as a slur. My extended family is not so far out of poverty that such class warfare snobbery appeals to me. You are not using the normal definition of "laborer". Merriam-Webster defines it as "a person who does hard physical work for money". Wikipedia defines it as "a person who works in one of the construction trades, traditionally considered unskilled manual labor, as opposed to skilled labor." Neither you nor I mean that definition of laborer. I believe you use it as a metaphorical slur. Rather than use that interpretaion, I decided to use the more common Marxist analysis of calling those who labor, including skilled laborers like programmers, the proletariat. Your secret sauce is likely to encourage people to become capitalists, perhaps a rentier capitalist, and thereby join the bourgeoisie class. Marx pointed out the petite bourgeoisie, of which we are members for I both consult and sell software, are more likely to identify with the haute bourgeoisie; those who truly control capital. But I prefer to identify with craft-based workers (and unlike the old AFL policy, promote labor solidarity over trade separatism; though free education/training and strong social services). Now, I agree with Piketty that capital return is greater than the rate of economic growth, so if your proposal is that people should become capitalists, the you are right. But we cannot all become capitalists. That's why, to resolve the dilemma of the categorical imperative, I support a progressive global wealth tax. As an observation, many people running a con choose marks who already half-believe in the con. The ones who follow up on a Nigerian prince scam are those who want to believe. Your last paragraph follows the same lines of only trying to convince those who want to believe you are right. If my guess is correct, and since I don't think a Marxist analysis like this is flawed, I think it's a shame that you find yourself needing to use these tactics for something I don't think is a scam. Rather than trying to understand your ideas through promotional materials, I hoped to get some input from jagthedrummer, who it seems has found that they are not applicable to part of a business. I'm curious to know both the success and failures. jagthedrummer? Care to speak up?, since the author thinks I'm not worthy of his time.