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Stop underselling yourself...

Matt Davison | The Code Crisis
Matt Davison | The Code Crisis
@immattdavison
This week I spoke to a group of developers who were regularly underselling themselves, taking home less than $100/project and not seeing the value in the products they were producing, this is ok for them but what affect does it have on the greater industry?

Why pricing low is harming you...
Pricing your work too low is harmful. Simple as that. The question here is how and why is it so harmful?
Development is a skill, it’s profitable to both you and your clients and has value to everyone who accesses or holds the end product. Finding the right clients and such is a task of it’s own but it’s something that is manageable, however there are ways to find clients, don’t let underselling yourself be the go to.
When underselling yourself, you are damaging your own personal reputation by making the value of your work appear minimal.
When you price a project lower than it’s value you are essentially displaying yourself and your brand as being low value and cheap. In contrast to other developers, clients may see you to be unreliable or expect less of you and therefore go elsewhere to find someone who can best fulfil their needs.
How pricing low is harming the industry...
Underselling yourself is affecting more than just you…
Underselling yourself is affecting the entirety of the industry, by offering to build a website or another program for some spare change you are teaching potential clients of developers around the world that they can get 100s of dollars worth of work done for just $5-$10.
This then takes business away from developers who are trying to earn a living in the industry, while also removing the space you have to up your prices and make the true value of what you produce because people are expecting to pay just 5% of that instead.
Why am I talking about this?
At some point along the line almost every developer finds themselves accepting a price lower than what their work is worth. I’m almost every developer in this situation, accepting less than $50 for a complete project rather than $50 for just an hours worth of my time.
While I’m not saying here that you should definitely charge an hourly rate, I’m saying that you should definitely have an idea of what an hour of your time is worth. For most people who are looking to get into the industry, in a freelance position this should be between $40-$60 per hour.
Once you have an idea of what an hour of your time is worth, think of the amount of effort and time you’re likely to need to put in to fulfil the needs of the client and to be happy with what you have produced.
As a conclusion from this...
As a conclusion from this I would like to ask for your sake and your peers, please price your work at the price you deserve to be earning. Not only will it better benefit you, but it will also benefit so many others!
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Matt Davison | The Code Crisis
Matt Davison | The Code Crisis @immattdavison

I'm Matt, front-end web developer based in England, UK.
I talk about code, lifestyle, and more!

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