Last week, I had enough.
I was pretty busy with projects, and must have had ten quote requests in two days. Normally, this is good, but this particular time, eight out of ten were WAAAAAY out of my price range. I mean, MILES away.
Now, I realize not everyone out there is familiar with a copywriting service, and probably doesn’t have the foggiest idea what one costs, but don’t you think that someone like me, with my credentials and professional website, is going to cost more than $10 an hour?
Anyway, since most of the time it averages three back and forth messages before I have enough info to get a price, I just reached my breaking point in chasing business that has no chance of materializing (I would venture each of the eight took 20 min to 1/2 hour total time to converse with.)
So I went and put some basic prices on my quote page.
I’ve done this before, and it stops a lot of people from contacting me, so this time I did it a little different – I put the prices and the “here’s some pricing info” after the form.
See, my thinking here is if one goes to a quote page, and first sees three paragraphs of text explaining price, well, that’s a turnoff… they came to contact me, and now they have to scroll for the form. No good.
So I’m first giving them the form, and the price info is there if they want to read it. Most will, but the perception is a bit different. I’m hoping that doing it this way will keep the “$10 an hour” people at bay, but also encourage those who want to use me (and let’s face it, I’m really not that expensive.)
I’ll revisit this in a few weeks and give you the results, as it’s something maybe we can all learn/benefit from. And please, if you have any ideas, feel free to comment with such.
I am interested in hearing the outcome of this. I have prices up on my site but I find cheapos still come pouring in.
I would just like to say that from a consumers perspective I appreciate it when prices are published right on the website. It cuts to the chase, avoids awkwardness, possible disappointment, and waste of precious time for something that may not be within budget. It lets you know if you are dealing with a big league player that is truly knowledgeable or a small peanuts guy that probably has English as a second language.
Just saying, I appreciate it.