When you describe things in terms people don't understand, they tend not to trust you as much. Trust is important.
Understanding what people really want to know—and how that differs from what you want to tell them—is a fundamental tenet of sales. And you can't get good at making money unless you get good at selling.
People are happy to pay for things that work well. Never be afraid to put a price on something. If you pour your heart into something and make it great, sell it. For real money. Even if there are free options, even if the market is flooded with free. People will pay for things they love.
Charging for something makes you want to make it better. I've found this to be really important. It's a great lesson if you want to learn how to make money.
After all, paying for something is one of the most intimate things that can occur between two people. One person is offering something for sale, and the other person is spending hard-earned cash to buy it. Both have worked hard to be able to offer the other something he or she wants. That's trust—and, dare I say, intimacy. For customers, paying for something sets a high expectation.
When you put a price on something, you get really honest feedback from customers. When entrepreneurs ask me how to get customers to tell us what they really think, I respond with two words: Charge them. They'll tell you what they think, demand excellence, and take the product seriously in a way they never would if they were just using it for free.
As an entrepreneur, you should welcome that pressure. You should want to be forced to be good at what you do.
As the projects started getting bigger and costing a lot more, I noticed that clients became more reticent about signing on. Big numbers and long time frames make people nervous. More money and more time mean more risk, and risk is something all companies would prefer to avoid.
I thought about the problem and decided to try something new. Instead of doing long, expensive projects, we'd do short, affordable ones. Instead of billing $50,000 for a 15-page website redesign that would take three months, we'd charge $3,500 per page and offer to complete the page in a week. If you want another page, it's another $3,500 and another week. We called it 37express.
It took off. It took the risk out. It let companies try us out before committing to something big. And it was a lot more fun for us—fewer meetings, less stress, fewer decisions to be made. Just a quick one-week project for a fixed price. If you want more, we'll sell you another.
Remove the fear, and people will be more willing to pay you. People don't like uncertainty—especially when they have to pay for it.
You can sell many things.
We've continued to experiment with pricing models. It's been a great way to get a 360-degree view of how customers think about their money and our products. Our apps, for example, are available as monthly subscriptions for $24 to $249 per month. We've sold our book Getting Real as an instant download for $19 and as a paperback for $25. We've sold tickets to our eight-hour workshops for up to $1,000. Listings on our job board are $400 for 30 days. We sell listings on Sortfolio, a service we built to help small businesses find Web designers, for $99 per month.
We've even sold promotional T-shirts, for $19, when just about everyone else in the business gives them away. People wear shirts they paid $19 for. People turn free T-shirts into rags. Rags don't promote anyone.
my customers have always been my investors. My goal has always been to be profitable on Day One.
Bootstrapping forces you to think about making money on Day One.
Anyone can spend money. Making it is the hard part, and being forced to do it early is one of the best ways to get better at it later.
So here's a great way to practice making money: Buy and sell the same thing over and over on Craigslist or eBay. Seriously.
Sell only things you'd want to buy for yourself. I like to sell Apple products.
Understanding what people really want to know—and how that differs from what you want to tell them—is a fundamental tenet of sales. And you can't get good at making money unless you get good at selling.
People are happy to pay for things that work well. Never be afraid to put a price on something. If you pour your heart into something and make it great, sell it. For real money. Even if there are free options, even if the market is flooded with free. People will pay for things they love.
Charging for something makes you want to make it better. I've found this to be really important. It's a great lesson if you want to learn how to make money.
After all, paying for something is one of the most intimate things that can occur between two people. One person is offering something for sale, and the other person is spending hard-earned cash to buy it. Both have worked hard to be able to offer the other something he or she wants. That's trust—and, dare I say, intimacy. For customers, paying for something sets a high expectation.
When you put a price on something, you get really honest feedback from customers. When entrepreneurs ask me how to get customers to tell us what they really think, I respond with two words: Charge them. They'll tell you what they think, demand excellence, and take the product seriously in a way they never would if they were just using it for free.
As an entrepreneur, you should welcome that pressure. You should want to be forced to be good at what you do.
As the projects started getting bigger and costing a lot more, I noticed that clients became more reticent about signing on. Big numbers and long time frames make people nervous. More money and more time mean more risk, and risk is something all companies would prefer to avoid.
I thought about the problem and decided to try something new. Instead of doing long, expensive projects, we'd do short, affordable ones. Instead of billing $50,000 for a 15-page website redesign that would take three months, we'd charge $3,500 per page and offer to complete the page in a week. If you want another page, it's another $3,500 and another week. We called it 37express.
It took off. It took the risk out. It let companies try us out before committing to something big. And it was a lot more fun for us—fewer meetings, less stress, fewer decisions to be made. Just a quick one-week project for a fixed price. If you want more, we'll sell you another.
Remove the fear, and people will be more willing to pay you. People don't like uncertainty—especially when they have to pay for it.
You can sell many things.
We've continued to experiment with pricing models. It's been a great way to get a 360-degree view of how customers think about their money and our products. Our apps, for example, are available as monthly subscriptions for $24 to $249 per month. We've sold our book Getting Real as an instant download for $19 and as a paperback for $25. We've sold tickets to our eight-hour workshops for up to $1,000. Listings on our job board are $400 for 30 days. We sell listings on Sortfolio, a service we built to help small businesses find Web designers, for $99 per month.
We've even sold promotional T-shirts, for $19, when just about everyone else in the business gives them away. People wear shirts they paid $19 for. People turn free T-shirts into rags. Rags don't promote anyone.
my customers have always been my investors. My goal has always been to be profitable on Day One.
Bootstrapping forces you to think about making money on Day One.
Anyone can spend money. Making it is the hard part, and being forced to do it early is one of the best ways to get better at it later.
So here's a great way to practice making money: Buy and sell the same thing over and over on Craigslist or eBay. Seriously.
Sell only things you'd want to buy for yourself. I like to sell Apple products.
Reference:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110301/making-money-small-business-advice-from-jason-fried.html