3d โข The Weekly Stack
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ $๐ด ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ท๐ฒ๐ฐ๐: ๐ช๐ต๐ ๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฌ๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ง๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ ๐ฃ๐๐๐ ๐ฎ ๐๐ฒ๐ถ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฌ๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐๐ด๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐
There's a number hiding inside almost every proposal you send. The client never sees it. Most days, you don't either.
Your hourly rate.
Not the agency that bills off a timesheet. That one is at least honest about what it's doing. I'm talking about the quiet version. You hear the project, guess the hours in your head, multiply by a number that felt fair, round it off, and call it a price.
You know how it sounds. You've said most of these:
"It's about 20 hours, so call it $2,000."
"I don't want to overcharge him."
"The last guy quoted him $900."
"It only took me a weekend. I can't charge $5,000 for that."
"AI does half of it now, so I should probably drop my price."
"Can you do it for $1,500?" "Yeah, I can make that work."
"I'll make it up on the next one."
Every one of those is a decision about your hours. Not one of them is about his business.
๐ฅ๐๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐บ๐ฎ๐๐ต ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฎ ๐๐ฒ๐ฏ๐๐ถ๐๐ฒ ๐ฏ๐๐ถ๐น๐ฑ
Say you quote a five-page site for a local service business at $2,500. You figured 25 hours. That's $100 an hour on paper. Feels good.
Now count the real hours. Discovery call and proposal, say 3. Chasing the content and photos he swore he'd send by Friday, say 5. The build, say 20, because it's never the 15 you planned. Two rounds of revisions that turn into four, say 8. Launch, DNS, and the email that stopped working, say 4. The "quick questions" for the next 60 days, say 5.
That's 45 hours. About $55 an hour.
And if you read the scope creep Deep Dive, you already know how the worst version ends. Same $2,500 project, a few "while you're in there" requests, and you're sitting at $8 an hour.
Here's where it gets ugly.
Say you fix all of that. You tighten the scope, you build from templates, you let AI take the first pass at copy. The same site now takes you 12 hours.
Hourly thinking says the price should drop. 12 hours at $100 is $1,200.
You got faster, better, and more efficient, and your pricing model took $1,300 off the table as a reward.
Read that again. Hourly pricing is the only system where getting good at your job is a pay cut.
Now look at it from his side of the counter. Say he's a plumber. Say his average job is $400, a site that actually converts brings him four extra calls a month, and he closes half. That's $800 a month. About $9,600 a year from one website. Hypothetical numbers. Swap in your own client's.
Against $9,600 a year, a $2,500 site pays for itself in about three months. A $5,000 site pays for itself in about six. Neither price had anything to do with how long it took you.
๐ง๐ต๐ฎ๐'๐ ๐ป๐ผ๐ ๐ฎ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฏ๐น๐ฒ๐บ
Here's the blunt truth.
You don't have a pricing problem. You have a measurement problem.
You price by the hour because your hours are the only number you have. Nobody put his number on the table, so you used yours.
๐๐ ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ ๐ผ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฑ๐ถ๐๐ฐ๐ผ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น
The $8 an hour project didn't happen when you wrote the proposal. It happened 30 minutes earlier, on the discovery call, when you asked him what he wanted the site to look like and never asked what a customer is worth.
Think about what you walked away with. Colors he likes. Three competitor sites he hates. A list of pages. Maybe the login to his domain.
What you didn't walk away with: his average job value, how many calls he gets now, how many he closes, and which jobs he wants more of.
So when you sit down to price it, there's nothing to price against except your own time.
You can't charge for value you never measured.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฉ๐ฎ๐น๐๐ฒ ๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฆ๐๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ธ
Four steps. Each one has a rule.
๐๐ญ๐๐ฉ ๐. ๐
๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ ๐ง๐ฎ๐ฆ๐๐๐ซ.
Rule: never quote before you know what one customer is worth to him.
Three questions. What's an average job worth? How many new customers come in during a normal month? How many more could you handle without hiring? Write the answers down while he talks. If he doesn't know, that's useful too. It means nobody's tracking anything, and that's work you can sell.
๐๐ญ๐๐ฉ ๐. ๐๐๐ญ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐ซ.
Rule: your hours set the floor. They never set the price.
Yes, you still count hours. Estimate them for real, pad for revisions and the content chase, and multiply by the rate you need to run an actual business. Not the rate you'd be embarrassed to say out loud. That's the lowest number you'll accept. It's a walk-away line, not a quote.
๐๐ญ๐๐ฉ ๐. ๐
๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐ .
Rule: price against his first year, not your first draft.
Take the answers from Step 1 and figure out what the outcome is worth to him over 12 months. Keep it conservative. Use his numbers, not your hopes. Then pick a price where he gets his money back in a window you'd defend out loud. If you can't defend the payback with his own numbers, the price is too high. If the payback is three weeks, it's probably too low.
๐๐ญ๐๐ฉ ๐. ๐๐ก๐จ๐ฐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ญ๐ก.
Rule: the price never travels without the math.
A number by itself gets compared to the guy on Facebook who builds sites for $800. A number with his own revenue next to it gets compared to his own revenue. Put the payback in the proposal, in his numbers, in one or two lines.
๐ช๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐น๐ผ๐ผ๐ธ๐ ๐น๐ถ๐ธ๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฎ ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐น ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฝ๐ผ๐๐ฎ๐น
Take a plumbing company. Call it Ridgeline Plumbing. The owner wants a new site because the current one "looks old."
The version that pays you $8 an hour: you ask about colors and pages, guess 25 hours, and quote $2,500. He says the last guy quoted $1,200. You meet him at $1,800 because you want the win. Then the content takes six weeks to show up and the revisions don't stop.
The version that pays you: on the call, you ask the three questions. His average job is around $400, but a water heater install runs closer to $2,000, and that's the work he wants more of. He gets maybe two a month. He could handle six.
Now you're not building a site that looks newer. You're building a site that books water heater installs. A dedicated page, financing info, a tracked call button. You quote $5,500 and put one line under it:
"Three extra water heater installs pays for this project. You told me you could handle four more a month."
Same plumber. Same handful of pages. One proposal is about your time. The other one is about his money.
๐ฉ๐ฎ๐น๐๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐. ๐ท๐๐๐ ๐ฐ๐ต๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ด๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐บ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ
People confuse these constantly, and the confusion is why a lot of agency owners try value pricing once and quit.
๐๐ก๐๐ซ๐ ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฆ๐จ๐ซ๐: you read somewhere that you're undercharging, so you take your normal quote and double it. Same discovery call, same proposal, bigger number. He balks, you cave, and you decide value pricing doesn't work in your market.
๐๐๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ข๐๐ข๐ง๐ : the price comes from his numbers, and you can show your work. If his numbers are small, the price is small. A handyman doing $150 jobs with a full calendar does not need a $6,000 site, and value pricing tells you that before you embarrass yourself quoting one.
A med spa where one new client is worth thousands over a year can justify a bigger build. A lawn guy with more work than he can handle might need a $1,500 site and a better voicemail greeting. Same method. Different answer.
Value pricing isn't a way to charge everybody more. It's a way to stop guessing.
๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฝ๐๐ ๐๐ผ๐ ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐น
Change the numbers. Keep the structure.
๐๐๐ญ๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ ๐ง๐ฎ๐ฆ๐๐๐ซ, ๐จ๐ง ๐๐ข๐ฌ๐๐จ๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ฒ.
"Before we talk about what the site looks like, I need to understand what it's supposed to do. What's an average job worth to you? And roughly how many new customers come in during a normal month?"
๐๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐ข๐๐.
"The project is $5,500. Here's how I got there. You told me a water heater install is about $2,000 and you could handle four more a month. Three of those pays for the whole site. Everything after that is yours."
"๐๐ก๐ ๐จ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ซ ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฒ ๐ช๐ฎ๐จ๐ญ๐๐ $๐,๐๐๐."
"He might be right for what he's building. I'm not building a site that looks newer. I'm building one that books the jobs you told me you want more of. If budget is the issue, I'd rather cut scope than cut the part that makes it work. Here's what a smaller version looks like."
"๐๐จ๐ฐ ๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ฒ ๐ก๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ฌ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ญ?"
"I don't price it that way. If I got faster, you'd want it cheaper. If I got stuck, you'd be paying for my problem. I'd rather we agree on what it's supposed to do and what that's worth, and then the hours are on me."
That last one does two jobs. It answers the question, and it tells him the timeline risk is yours. Clients like that more than you'd expect.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐บ๐ผ๐๐ ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ป๐ด๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ผ๐๐ ๐ฝ๐ต๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ป๐ด
"It'll only take me a few hours."
It sounds humble. It sounds like you're being straight with him.
Listen to what it actually tells him. The price of my work is the time it costs me, and I'm about to tell you that number is small.
You just handed him the only number you had, and it's the one that makes you cheapest.
๐ฌ๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ถ๐
Yes or no. No "kind of."
- Do you ask what an average job is worth on every discovery call?
- Do you know your floor, the actual number below which you walk away?
- When a project got easier for you to build, did you keep the price where it was?
- Does your proposal show the client his payback in his own numbers?
- When someone asks for a discount, do you cut scope instead of cutting price?
- Do you set prices without guessing hours and rounding?
- Do you know what your last three projects actually paid you per hour, counted honestly?
- Could you explain why your price is your price without mentioning time?
More than two no's and you're not pricing your work. You're pricing your time, and your time has a ceiling.
๐ฌ๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ก๐ฒ๐ ๐ฅ๐๐น๐ฒ
Your hours set the floor. His outcome sets the price.
Because the $8 an hour project was never about the hours. It was the price you agreed to the day you decided your time was the only number that mattered.
Drop a comment: what's the last project you priced by guessing hours, and what did it actually pay you per hour when it was done? Run the math and post the number. The uglier it is, the more useful it is to the room.
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๐ง๐ต๐ฒ $๐ด ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ท๐ฒ๐ฐ๐: ๐ช๐ต๐ ๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฌ๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ง๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ ๐ฃ๐๐๐ ๐ฎ ๐๐ฒ๐ถ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฌ๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐๐ด๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐
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