[fragmede]

Low four, so say like $2,000 for a five minute video? Why not list $1,999 for a five minute video on your website? For an open source side project, that's maybe out of reach, for a company, that's peanuts (so they'll readily pay it). Or; how much haggling do you do? It's a very neat product, but how much time do you spend on sales emails to get to a price?

[peteforde]

Because every project is different.

Because the first person to say a number in a negotiation tends to lose.

Because maybe they aren't selling five minute videos. The point is not ever to create five minutes of video. The point is to clearly explain what a product does, and that process is going to be wildly different depending on whether the product makes any fucking sense. You usually don't know if you're going to be able to work with a client until you talk to them.

If someone is sexy and charming, you'll probably go home with them for free. If someone else is neither sexy nor charming, they better be prepared to put something pretty amazing on the table or you're going to pass.

[tomgs]

Oh, I should have 100% said this instead.

Yeah, yeah, scrap what I said - let's go with Pete.

[fragmede]

He's hired! :p

All of what Pete says is true. I'm just putting forth that having a ballpark number is useful frame of reference because you don't know how many people aren't calling because they don't want to engage with the unknown so I think you're losing more business than you think. But, it doesn't sound like you're short business in the first place, so what I'm saying isn't relevant.

[tomgs]

Can one ever really be long on new business? :)

As the greatest singer in our generation said so succinctly in one of her latest hits:

Yeah, my receipts be lookin' like phone numbers If it ain't money, then wrong number

It's kind of like that for me, if phone numbers were five digits!

[tomgs]

Oh, half the fun is the sales calls. It’s very much something I can delegate off to a person on my team, but this is relatively new and so the volume is not that large yet. I also really enjoy them!

I treat these more as discovery sessions than anything else. It’s also how I’ve landed on the exact pricing points I have - talking to people, especially when early, is a great experience.

There’s also something to be said about showing prices only in calls - people hate it here (or in general), but there is value to showing the price at the end of the call and not at the start. You get to show the thing to the person, get them excited, and then the price point looks a little different.

The trick is tailoring the sales call to the person - if I can convince them that they should keep me around since I provide a good service, they might pay the price.

Also, there are always discounts as the guy above mentioned;)

[tomgs]

As an aside, what I normally do is reply to each form submission with a personal video and an overview (albeit a short one) of what I think the project should look like given their demands. I then drop a price and get on a call, if they want to.

Many do! And the ones who don’t still get a taste of how I think like and perhaps want to talk some more about other things - this is a side-business productized service; I mainly contract with technical startup companies to do their GTM.

It’s actually looking like it’d be a pretty decent lead funnel for that too!

Man, going out on my own was a great fucking decision.