[komon]

Yeah, your ability to charge more scales with your proven ability to deliver. That's where referrals/portfolios/testimonials/case studies come in.

Basically, you want to charge a percentage of the value you're promising to provide for them. And then that's going to get multiplied by their confidence in you.

If I'm bidding on a project that I think can make $1MM/yr for my client, and I normally charge 10% of the first year's worth of value, then I'm looking at $100K. If the business I'm working with only has a 50% confidence that I'm a safe bet to produce that value, or an 80% confidence, that's going to get reflected in what price we negotiate to. Probably more like $50k in the 50% confidence bucket.

But the more proven you are, the more you can say, "I said this thing would make $2MM and by gum it actually made $5MM" the more you're going to be able to charge.

N.B. That 50% isn't "It's a coin toss whether or not they'll complete the project", it's more like "When they complete the project, we're confident that we're going to get at least 50% of the value they're selling us on"