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Ask HN: What should I do to be able to raise my rates?
The recent post about Sam charging $1000/hr (http://samsoff.es/posts/one-thousand-dollars-an-hour) and the fact that my current client just spent $30K on a load testing provider who didn't provide much value made me think about the things I should do to be able to naturally raise my rates.
Here are the things I can think of:
- Raise my profile by speaking in local events
- Polish my website to showcase my experience (10 years in .NET and numerous side projects)
- Pick a niche that provides high perceived value: security / training / load testing (apparently)
- Charge per day or per week rather than per hour (as suggested by patio11)
What else do you suggest me to do or has worked for you?
- brk 14y agoWhy do you need a specific reason? If you feel you are worth more money, starting quoting projects appropriately. The market will respond with data ( or lack thereof) which you can incorporate.
- aymeric 14y agoHow do you find higher paying clients for example? How do you push the upper boundary of how much you can charge without turning away all your leads?
- patio11 14y agoHow do you find higher paying clients for example? There's many ways to do this. One way is to figure out who has ability and desire to pay for things in your area of expertise. I help folks sell software. One way to find people who are capable and desire to pay $$$$ for selling more software is to go to conferences about that that charge, e.g., $2,000 per ticket. If you send a team of five people to that conference, you're not too likely to be scandalized when I quote you. How do you push the upper boundary of how much you can charge without turning away all your leads? The lowest risk way to do this is to have all of your needs met at your current utilization level, at which point decreasing your hit rate basically can't harm you, so why not quote higher? If you get engagements at $CURRENT_RATE + 25%, then a) your new rate is $CURRENT_RATE + 25% and b) you've got even more flexibility in turning down engagements. Repeat as necessary.
- xiaoma 14y agoThis was my approach with EFL of all things, believe it or not. As a 27 year-old in Taiwan I was successfully billing $50USD/hour for helping 9 year-olds with problem areas from their recent beginning-level classes. The rate for most native English speakers doing that kind of work at the time was $20USD/hour. I did have far above the median skills to back it up, though.
- patio11 14y agoThe easiest way to raise your rates is to raise your rates. Totally not joking. One of the reasons tptacek and I go on the war path about this is that us geeks seem to be culturally abominable at properly pricing things. I mean, half the comments on the $1,000 an hour rate are people who a) are geeks selling services and b) want the geek to lose. There are other ways to raise your rates: 1) Specialize in a particular thing which is in-demand by... 2) ... savvy clients who receive a high, easily quantifiable value from it and ... 3) ... has limited competition available. But even HNers who do, e.g., commodity PHP web development could probably get 50-100% more just by turning down anyone who doesn't pay 50-100% more.
- reubenswartz 14y agoGreat advice. Another way to think of it is to look for areas that companies often have teams of people working for weeks (or months) to solve a problem that you can solve in a fraction of the time. If they are spending $100K to not solve the problem, asking for $120K to solve it in two months is a good deal for both sides. You can never get more than your perceived differential value, but buyers will be happy to pay you far less if that's OK with you. ;-)
- codegeek 14y agoI completely agree with all the points. The key is to find a specialized/niche domain where demand is high but competition is limited. But in some cases, you can just ask for a raise and it might work. It is very common that lot of people are afraid to ask for a raise thinking they won't get it.
- nicholassmith 14y agoI think it's the fear point of 'if I do this and put my prices up, what happens if I get no clients'. Which of course is a reasonable thing to be scared of, and if it doesn't work then drop your prices back and work out what you can do to be more valuable.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- gexla 14y agoOne element that I feel is quite important in the post you mentioned (Sam charging 1k per hour) is that Sam has actually shipped something, though I don't know how successful his app is. I'm guessing that a lot of devs don't have this experience (A - Z participation in shipping something.) Even a lot of small start-up devs are likely shielded from many of the headaches that go into doing something like this. The experience he has picked up is very valuable and could probably sell a lot of hours in client work.
- aymeric 14y agoI actually shipped _a lot_, so you think this can play an important part in the process?
- orangethirty 14y agoJust do it. No one will come down on you or anything. Do a quick A/B test. For the following clients, split them in two. Given side A your current rate, and side B your new rate. Measure the difference and prepare to realize that there is none. People who will hire you will hire you. Money gravitates to those who ask for it, and not to those who "deserve" it.