How do I charge my client for automating their tasks

[uhhfeef]

Quick preface, I love automation with a passion and genuinely feel like that's something I really excel in. I've always wanted to create workflows for local business to streamline their processes and help them focus on what they could provide value the most in. That's what I do for work at my current company anyway.

The one thing that never made sense to me was how I should go about monetizing it.

With other business like, lets say, lead gen, the idea is that you could get a portion of the leads you get in and that's how you could money with it.

But how do you do that if you're cutting down time spent in a business? I get that it is a valuable skill but isn't this particular type of value defined by the customer then? For eg: if they think they're time is worth 10$/hr and if I cut down 10 hours of their time, they get to decide what I can charge which would be 100$ (plus whatever I'd want the profit to be for the service). Does this make sense or do I have the complete wrong idea of value based business?

I got in touch with a therapist (from India) who was complaining about how much time she wastes on manual work. Immediately saw the opportunity to make her life easier and even created test workflows which eliminate 25 hours of her time on a monthly basis.

I was thinking of 50 $ / month subscription, free additional bug fixes, troubleshooting and maintenance. Additional costs for adding more workflows.

Would really appreciate your insights here.

 

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[Kevin88660]

Quick preface, I love automation with a passion and genuinely feel like that's something I really excel in. I've always wanted to create workflows for local business to streamline their processes and help them focus on what they could provide value the most in. That's what I do for work at my current company anyway.

The one thing that never made sense to me was how I should go about monetizing it.

With other business like, lets say, lead gen, the idea is that you could get a portion of the leads you get in and that's how you could money with it.

But how do you do that if you're cutting down time spent in a business? I get that it is a valuable skill but isn't this particular type of value defined by the customer then? For eg: if they think they're time is worth 10$/hr and if I cut down 10 hours of their time, they get to decide what I can charge which would be 100$ (plus whatever I'd want the profit to be for the service). Does this make sense or do I have the complete wrong idea of value based business?

I got in touch with a therapist (from India) who was complaining about how much time she wastes on manual work. Immediately saw the opportunity to make her life easier and even created test workflows which eliminate 25 hours of her time on a monthly basis.

I was thinking of 50 $ / month subscription, free additional bug fixes, troubleshooting and maintenance. Additional costs for adding more workflows.

Would really appreciate your insights here.

Can you give an example on how you reduce the time spent for a particular type of business?

If it is as powerful as you described the folks here I am sure more than a few will be willing to pay for it.

 

[uhhfeef]

Can you give an example on how you reduce the time spent for a particular type of business?

If it is as powerful as you described the folks here I am sure more than a few will be willing to pay for it.

Finding the best solution for a given task, automating it with Python or for this particular client, Zapier and a Python script.

Sometimes the task itself needs re-adjusting because that in itself isn't the best way to achieve something so I sometimes have to change that as well.

Side note: I've been able to save more than 86% of time spent at the job I'm working at, I know how powerful it can be. I just don't know how to monetize it.

 

[Kevin88660]

Finding the best solution for a given task, automating it with Python or for this particular client, Zapier and a Python script.

Sometimes the task itself needs re-adjusting because that in itself isn't the best way to achieve something so I sometimes have to change that as well.

Side note: I've been able to save more than 86% of time spent at the job I'm working at, I know how powerful it can be. I just don't know how to monetize it.

What kind of tasks could be automated and what kind of task could not?

 

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[uhhfeef]

What kind of tasks could be automated and what kind of task could not?

Literally anything that doesn't have creative input.

 

[Kevin88660]

Literally anything that doesn't have creative input.

Can you automate routine white collar job scope that involve email, text, phone call with other parties to discuss sales quotation, follow up with leads, communicating with suppliers and chasing for replies…

 

[uhhfeef]

Can you automate routine white collar job scope that involve email, text, phone call with other parties to discuss sales quotation, follow up with leads, communicating with suppliers and chasing for replies…

Probably. I'd have to see how it's done currently and what can be done with it.

 

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[Pecunia]

There are many ways to charge for development obviously, I would say the most common one is hourly rate. After this, you charge a monthly service fee to keep the service running (assuming you need to run a server, but even if your costs are 0 like with a static site, you should still charge). Then if you have to do additional work, you charge hourly rate on top of this again. In the past I sometimes did some development freelancing work, and the times I did not make it clear I would charge hourly fee again once the website/app was live, I would always regret it. I would also recommend to never agree on a fixed price, unless it is crystal clear what needs to be delivered. I remember the first web application I made and charged x amount. After this they kept asking for fixes, and I ended up with a terribly hourly rate.

Value based pricing (i.e. if you improve profit with x, you get y%) is something I don't have experience with. Again I think the problem is often to have it crystal clear what you get paid. Lets say you improve profit by 50% with your automation, but they also hired a marketer which caused profit to rise, you can quickly get into disagreements about what you did contribute. Also you really need to be able to trust people. However, I have seen one example where a developer got paid x% of extra generated profit, and it worked out amazing since the developer was so motivated and both guys were very honest/hard working.

 

[uhhfeef]

There are many ways to charge for development obviously, I would say the most common one is hourly rate. After this, you charge a monthly service fee to keep the service running (assuming you need to run a server, but even if your costs are 0 like with a static site, you should still charge). Then if you have to do additional work, you charge hourly rate on top of this again. In the past I sometimes did some development freelancing work, and the times I did not make it clear I would charge hourly fee again once the website/app was live, I would always regret it. I would also recommend to never agree on a fixed price, unless it is crystal clear what needs to be delivered. I remember the first web application I made and charged x amount. After this they kept asking for fixes, and I ended up with a terribly hourly rate.

Value based pricing (i.e. if you improve profit with x, you get y%) is something I don't have experience with. Again I think the problem is often to have it crystal clear what you get paid. Lets say you improve profit by 50% with your automation, but they also hired a marketer which caused profit to rise, you can quickly get into disagreements about what you did contribute. Also you really need to be able to trust people. However, I have seen one example where a developer got paid x% of extra generated profit, and it worked out amazing since the developer was so motivated and both guys were very honest/hard working.

Thanks for the input!

 

[Pecunia]

Thanks for the input!

Take what I say with a grain of salt. Clearly I am not good at making money, otherwise I wouldn't have joined this place

 

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