Yes, Another Pricing Thread

[VirtualAvenger]

I'm glad I'm here - it's nice to have some people to talk to who have done this before!

The other night I showed my husband the rates I've set - I have a flat hourly rate, or you can buy "packages" of hours up-front at a sort of bulk-rate discount. 10 hours at 10% off, 20 hours at 20% off, etc., plus a sort of "grand opening" sale of 40 hours at 40% off.

He argued that if I'm going to sell packages, I should not discount them, because it's not like food, and that clients who go with this option will feel they have a claim on all of my time since they've already paid for it. He says that my packages should be full-price always, without fail.

I've read that many VA's offer their services at a slightly discounted "package rate" when hours are purchased in blocks, and I'm wondering if anybody here has any experience with this style of billing. Have you found that "bulk discounts" have hurt or helped your business?

[tenXmom]

There are many VAs who offer discounts to clients who pay a retainer fee upfront each month

Personally, I do not - I also don't bill hourly but by project/month/etc - I do offer a discount to clients who pay their invoices in full within a certain timeframe

[sydnee21]

Packages and discounts are certainly not a bad idea. Two things you may to want to cover upfront (and put in your contract) are:

1. Are you going to let hours rollover to the next month? This can potentially get you in trouble if clients are rolling over a large amount of hours each month. You may eventually end up with more hours booked than you have available.

2. When are they expected to have their assignments to you each month? Some people are procrastinators and will wait until the last minute. If you have 3 clients with 20 hours/month reserved that wait until the last week....you get the picture.

I would take a good look at the "grand opening pricing." With almost 50% off, are you potentially going to end up with hit-and-runs, those that jump on the half price bandwagon and are gone next month when their rate goes up? If you are going to continue their discounted rate, can you sustain your business at that rate in the long-term? Will you eventually end up with mixed feelings about the discounted clients when you have full price people knocking on the door? I may be more inclined to word it, "sign a contract for 40 hours by this date, get x hours free."

You can run your business as you see fit, that's one of the perks of being a business owner. We can all do whatever we want, but foresight is worth its weight in gold.

[VirtualAvenger]

Wow, sydnee, thank you so much for your thoughtful answer! Yes, those are definitely points I need to consider, and I like your idea of offering free hours rather than an hourly discount. I'll run some numbers and figure out just how low I'm willing to go, and rephrase the offer on my website.

I suppose I have another question, one which has only just come up this morning. I've been doing some very limited work on fiverr.com (where people advertise services for $5). I really like it because it's given me some exposure, a chance to brush up my skills on a variety of different projects, and it's helped me to meet some potential future clients. For instance, I did a landing page rewrite for a guy who is starting one of those forum-posting and Internet article marketing websites, and he asked me if I would stay on as a writer. Since he's just starting, he can't afford to pay me my usual rates, which would normally be a big fat no, but I'm trying to weigh the pros and cons here as well: just as with fiverr, it would give me more exposure and more chances to sharpen my skills and my repertoire, it would be challenging, and it would pay something. He asked me to come up with a more modest rate, perhaps a by-article rate or a per-hour rate that he could reasonably afford as a start-up business.

I have no idea what to do here. I'm just starting too, so I'm eager to get more clients and build my testimonials page, but I don't want to undersell myself either. Anybody have any ideas about what a reasonable rate for article-writing for the purposes of Internet marketing might be? I'd love to do work for this guy, but I don't want to waste my time.

Thanks!

[dkramer]

I've been a VA for 6 years and I'm just getting to a point where I realize that I don't have to sell myself short to get clients. It's really a liberating feeling!!

What I am currently doing to drum up a little extra business is giving two (2) hours of free virtual assistance so that a potential client can "try me out" and see the kind of service I can give to them. I figured that this was enough time to give them a good idea of how I can help them without over extending myself and giving away too much time.

So far I've had one person take advantage of it and while they ended up not becoming a client they did give me a glowing recommendation that I can use on my website so I feel that the two hours paid for itself.

As for how much to charge for your writing....I think, if it was me, I would figure up the least amount I would be willing to take on a per word amount and charge that way. This way if you have to do longer writings your pay will reflect that.

I know that it seems that everything I'm reading these days is talking about going away from per hour billing and going to package billing/monthly billing but I just can't see myself doing that. I've been stung too many times doing it that way and I worked for a VA firm that switched from hourly billing to package billing and they lost almost all of their clients, which scared me. The VA firm I worked for shut down and gave me permission to work with the clients we had and almost all of them came back to me when they found I that I charge hourly instead of package rates.

Wow, I just realized I wrote a book and probably didn't help you a bit....sorry about that....LOL

Dawn

[charmed]

This is not an affiliate link and I am not taking the seminar because I already charge by tasks and not by the hour now. But I really think this might help some of you with your pricing issues:

Why Should I Pay That When I Can Get a Temp or Offshore VA for $5 Bucks an Hour? – The Gritty Virtual Assistant