HACKER Q&A
📣 2bor-2n

How to convince my client to pay more?


I started working on landing page last week on fiverr. The task was to covert landing page design in html css with animation (mostly custom animation), and he told me if everything went well he would have more pages for me. He was a new client, so I charged $85 for this page with unlimited revisions. During the development there were a lot of things which weren't final from his side and I ended up working a lot with a lot of revisions/experiments for a single page. I even done some UX stuff which weren't in the scope of this gig, just to please him and gain his trust.

Fortunately, he likes my work and is very please with me. This page is completed now, and we are moving to other pages. But the problem is, I put a lot of effort in the page and now feel like I am being underpaid for the amount of work which I did.

How should I handle this situation and convince him to pay me more for the upcoming pages?

PS: I am from Pakistan and link to the landing page can be found http://bit.ly/2QrYKqE.


  👤 gus_massa Accepted Answer ✓
> unlimited revisions

Unlimited is too much. Charge more and put some restrictions on the number of revisions.

Try to read whatever patio11 wrote about this. For example https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...


👤 DoreenMichele
Figure out a per project price. Define it in a way that protects against scope creep.

Try to separate price from hours worked. If you get better and faster, the same price per project gradually becomes a better hourly wage for you.

Clients don't necessarily know nor care how long it takes you. They care did the task get done.

You need to have some idea how long things take and some tolerance for things taking different amounts of time. Keep your pricing structure focused on tasks or projects.

Charging by the hour when you aren't their employee is always all kinds of headache and neither side is happy. The client ends up feeling overcharged because they can't track your hours and you end up feeling underpaid.

Charge per task. Get good at defining tasks in a way that makes you happy with the pay.

Expect to not always get it right. Be kind to yourself when you don't. View it as a learning opportunity. Do some analysis of what went wrong and what you need to do different.


👤 chrisbennet
If you can get new work (another client), charge more for it. If you have a cheap client, get rid of them as soon as possible,

Cheap clients are bad clients. If you charge more, you will be more respected. You will have more and better clients. And you'll make more money. :-) Price acts as a signal. Think about how you would buy something that you didn't know about, say wine; in the absence of other info, you would equate the higher price with a better product.

If you charge less initially ("until you get your funding, etc") when you charge full price the customer will not feel grateful at the deal you gave them. Instead, they will feel ripped off by your full price. Charge full price or work for free.


👤 2bor-2n
Thank you, guys, for all these useful comments. I feel like I have to give you more perspective on why I bid too low i.e. $85.

First of all, I have only completed 20 low budget tasks on my Fiverr profile. This client is from Netherlands and he is a developer himself. When he first approached me, my gig was priced at $40 for a single page. He gave me all the requirements and asked about the offer, after reviewing the requirements I bid $80 and explained to him why I was doubling the price.

I am guessing he was looking for a low budget freelancer already, and if I pitch too much for new tasks he might run away.

PS: I have 5 years’ experience in frontend. Previously working for a company and recently switched to full time freelancing.


👤 marketgod
The market is crazy right now. Take what you can and save it. Seriously on Friday we lost some really important supports and we can see a horrible market going forward. Take what you can make. You have to put food on your table. With the number of EI claims in North America the contracts will likely dry up. For now, make the money and increase your clients then you can charge more once we get over this economic activity issues.

👤 eb0la
I guess what you need is to know in advance how much time, effort, and earnings will involve a gig. Not just from Fiverr, but for anything.

Maybe whay helps is to timebox the assignment: I will be available for fixes/etc for... a week, maybe two weeks ? Also, having a ticketing system might help you: it is very too easy to send an email from the phone to ask for new stuff and you need to track time anyway.


👤 codegeek
You can tell the existing client that now the intro. offer has expired and for new pages, you will charge $x/Hour with limited revisions. If he really liked your work, he would still pay. If not, you need to find a new client and this time, don't promise them unlimited revisions.

👤 wprapido
Charge more for future work

👤 bdcravens
Asking for more after the fact kind of messes up the Fiverr value prop for buyers, and I think you run the risk of them reporting you to Fiverr if you ask for more after the fact.

👤 mkbkn
I'd avoid Fiverr & Upwork as a worker. That's the race to the bottom.