Code Poet » pricing

In Defense of Consulting Businesses

Krista — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:30:24 +0000

You’re dreaming of starting a business: should you sell a service or a product? Products can scale, sure, but can services scale, in their own way? Bill Erickson argues that service consultancies can scale too.

Quick Overview
Some folks say that charging clients by time spent is no way to prosper because your time is finite. Sell a product, they say: it’s the sure-fire way to afternoons spent poolside, supping on caviar and sipping champagne like the idle rich. Respected WordPress consultant Bill Erickson says that by minimizing the aspects of your service business that don’t scale, you can maximize productive time and profit.

Image based on “In the workshop” by Les Chatfield, CC-BY-2.0

Pricing Strategy for Creatives

Krista — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:37:17 +0000

Pro tip: WordPress pros touted Pricing Strategy for Creatives in our free book, Getting Pricing Right.

Quick Overview
Most WordPress pros got into web design and development because they love spending time up close and personal with pixels and code, not because they relish figuring out what to charge and sending out invoices. Jason Blumer earns his living coaching designers and developers to slow down their sales process, get schooled on precisely what the client needs to be successful, and how to set pricing by the job, so that they earn not just an hourly wage, but what they’re worth. Let him take you to pricing school.

Image credit: “Price of Gasoline: Hawaii” by puuikibeach: CC-BY

WP Product Development Done Right

Rebecca — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 04:49:27 +0000

Putting out a WordPress product doesn’t start and end with your code. Get to grips with what separates the pros from the newbs, and you’ll have a product that someone other than your mom installs.

Quick overview:
Whether you’re developing themes or plugins for WordPress, dumping them out into the world isn’t going to instantly win you millions of users, dollars or rave reviews. This comprehensive article from Smashing Magazine takes you through the whole process of making professional WordPress products, from idea to execution to what happens after you write your last line of code.

Getting Pricing Right

Michael Pick — Fri, 11 May 2012 02:59:26 +0000

Let’s be honest, you got into developing or designing WordPress because there’s a market for it. If you wanted to scrape a living together between burger flipping gigs you’d still be working with SuperSiteDesignerPro++! or FrontPage.

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to get your pricing right in a competitive marketplace. Do you charge per hour, per project or some arcane combination of the two? Are you so confident in yourself that you’re charging three times the market average, but sitting next to your inbox waiting for a client? Or are you fighting off hordes of clientele, working 22 hours a day between caffeine infusions, and still barely making rent? Pricing’s not only tough, it’s also a fiercely guarded secret for most people.

That’s why Code Poet asked a handful of professionals that have been through what you’re going through and come out the other side. People you’ve heard of, people doing very nicely thank you from their WordPress-powered business.

In this short book, Mark Jaquith, Shane Pearlman and Remkus de Vries take you through their real world strategies and tactics for getting pricing right on your next WordPress project…

Read the full book by selecting one of the download options below: