The day I realized I was pricing my projects completely backwards for 2 years

I was sitting in my apartment in St. Paul last August, staring at a spreadsheet that made no sense. I had landed 12 projects in 6 months but my bank account was actually going down. Then it hit me while I was looking at a $500 web design job I finished in 3 days versus a $2000 project that took me 6 weeks. I was charging by the project size instead of the value to the client. The small quick jobs were paying me $166 an hour and the big slow ones were like $12 an hour after all the revisions and meetings. My neighbor Dave who does plumbing laughed when I told him and said he figured that out in his first year. Has anyone else had a moment where you realized you were doing the math completely wrong?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew_baker94d agoMost Upvoted

That small quick jobs paying way better than the big slow ones" hit home because it's the same trap I see everywhere people treat bigger numbers as better without looking at what they're actually walking away with per hour of their life. It's like buying cheap stuff that breaks in a month versus spending more on one thing that lasts years.

paige_bell813d ago

Jumped on a quick weekend job once that paid triple my usual hourly rate. Took me four hours and I was done while the big project I had been dragging out for a week was still going nowhere. Made me rethink everything.