I've got to give myself a little credit.
I did a "2X" in 2018. I doubled my prices and tripled sales by doing it. It's the "value perception" that really paid off.
I'm on a platform (Fiverr) where literally anybody can join and claim to do the same thing that I do. But the number of participants is daunting. I can't remember how painful it was when I began three years ago, but I was a fellow freelancer among the ranks of "cheap" products for miserly buyers.
My advantage in the end was that the whole time doing this, my product was better than all others. To compete, I had to be creative. I automated all my admin stuff until most of my time was spent on what I was being paid for rather than admin minutiae. I could then spend time learning and implementing Python and AWS because of not having enough sales to occupy my time producing the product.
I could hear the voices of well-meaning relatives in my head "how much is that per hour?" And I recognized that I'll be working much longer hours for my money. I don't get paid by the hour. I get paid per order, and per item. My product took a very long time if measured by an hourly wage. This is probably why new and "cheap" freelancers are coming from Pakistan, India and Nigeria so frequently on the platform. I'm one of maybe ten or more from US/UK/AU/CA within the top hundred freelancers. (It demands skills in English.)
Buyers don't want to pay much for the services I provide because they don't have any idea of the value of the product they are getting. The range of quality starts at complete crap why-did-I-spend-money quality... And at the top -- my product.
The thing is, I've not changed the quality of my product since day one. I only learned how to improve based on experience on the platform. Learning about the platform algorithms was part of success on it. Since the very beginning, I had always felt a need for over-delivering quality and customer service. SUCS applied (thank you TMF ) for every customer. Right now I'm approaching a thousand five-star reviews. Those were key. And knowing where else I was being measured by the platform was also key.
I provided a professional level product for the same cost of a freelancer from Nigeria. But I wanted to keep myself at the top where the demand drove my prices higher, and not arbitrarily set by me. I wanted to keep customer costs low enough to compete with others, while gaining more orders and having a heavier workload might force me to raise cost to customers because of demands upon my time. It was a bit of a valve -- I adjusted price or delivery promises as demands on my time applied pressure to that adjustment. More orders and bigger orders meant increased prices, which meant cheaper buyers went away who wasted my productive time.
Later...
The quality of my work and improvement of the placement of my freelance gig on the platform finally one day led to attaining a hand-picked ranking on the platform. I get that little badge attached to my profile now. In a platform like Fiverr it seems to hold some level of value for customers seeking value.
Three weeks after holding that Top Rated Seller ranking I doubled my prices across the board. I honestly thought that it would cause me to drop in sales. But I was surprised to find that what seemed to have happened is that the Value Perception applied, thus increasing the sheer number of sales. This compounded upon the benefit of having doubled my prices.
I go through a seven day week thinking that work is slow for me. But typically, a few of my Premium Buyers orders from me at my normal full rates. So I spend a third of the (former) time working for double the (former) income on an order now. All that down time has become more valuable to me now.
More orders come in from my Gig because of the perception of its value which high-quality customers want. There are customers out there who would rather not risk their time and money trying to find something merely adequate for their purpose. The customers that come to me are the ones that value their own time, and know that when they outsource to me, they're truly saving themselves time and energy while trusting they'll receive a high-quality product. (Transcription.)
I might be at a point now where my down time is spent searching for the "next" thing. I am starting to trust that my new pricing scheme can continue to pay the bills. Three years ago, I was borrowing and taking -- but now I'm paying stuff back and covering my own expenses. Three years may seem like a long time, but I'm comparing it to how my world looked when I began -- debt, uncertainty, etc.
How has Value Perception changed your business or your life?
I did a "2X" in 2018. I doubled my prices and tripled sales by doing it. It's the "value perception" that really paid off.
I'm on a platform (Fiverr) where literally anybody can join and claim to do the same thing that I do. But the number of participants is daunting. I can't remember how painful it was when I began three years ago, but I was a fellow freelancer among the ranks of "cheap" products for miserly buyers.
My advantage in the end was that the whole time doing this, my product was better than all others. To compete, I had to be creative. I automated all my admin stuff until most of my time was spent on what I was being paid for rather than admin minutiae. I could then spend time learning and implementing Python and AWS because of not having enough sales to occupy my time producing the product.
I could hear the voices of well-meaning relatives in my head "how much is that per hour?" And I recognized that I'll be working much longer hours for my money. I don't get paid by the hour. I get paid per order, and per item. My product took a very long time if measured by an hourly wage. This is probably why new and "cheap" freelancers are coming from Pakistan, India and Nigeria so frequently on the platform. I'm one of maybe ten or more from US/UK/AU/CA within the top hundred freelancers. (It demands skills in English.)
Buyers don't want to pay much for the services I provide because they don't have any idea of the value of the product they are getting. The range of quality starts at complete crap why-did-I-spend-money quality... And at the top -- my product.
The thing is, I've not changed the quality of my product since day one. I only learned how to improve based on experience on the platform. Learning about the platform algorithms was part of success on it. Since the very beginning, I had always felt a need for over-delivering quality and customer service. SUCS applied (thank you TMF ) for every customer. Right now I'm approaching a thousand five-star reviews. Those were key. And knowing where else I was being measured by the platform was also key.
I provided a professional level product for the same cost of a freelancer from Nigeria. But I wanted to keep myself at the top where the demand drove my prices higher, and not arbitrarily set by me. I wanted to keep customer costs low enough to compete with others, while gaining more orders and having a heavier workload might force me to raise cost to customers because of demands upon my time. It was a bit of a valve -- I adjusted price or delivery promises as demands on my time applied pressure to that adjustment. More orders and bigger orders meant increased prices, which meant cheaper buyers went away who wasted my productive time.
Later...
The quality of my work and improvement of the placement of my freelance gig on the platform finally one day led to attaining a hand-picked ranking on the platform. I get that little badge attached to my profile now. In a platform like Fiverr it seems to hold some level of value for customers seeking value.
Three weeks after holding that Top Rated Seller ranking I doubled my prices across the board. I honestly thought that it would cause me to drop in sales. But I was surprised to find that what seemed to have happened is that the Value Perception applied, thus increasing the sheer number of sales. This compounded upon the benefit of having doubled my prices.
I go through a seven day week thinking that work is slow for me. But typically, a few of my Premium Buyers orders from me at my normal full rates. So I spend a third of the (former) time working for double the (former) income on an order now. All that down time has become more valuable to me now.
More orders come in from my Gig because of the perception of its value which high-quality customers want. There are customers out there who would rather not risk their time and money trying to find something merely adequate for their purpose. The customers that come to me are the ones that value their own time, and know that when they outsource to me, they're truly saving themselves time and energy while trusting they'll receive a high-quality product. (Transcription.)
I might be at a point now where my down time is spent searching for the "next" thing. I am starting to trust that my new pricing scheme can continue to pay the bills. Three years ago, I was borrowing and taking -- but now I'm paying stuff back and covering my own expenses. Three years may seem like a long time, but I'm comparing it to how my world looked when I began -- debt, uncertainty, etc.
How has Value Perception changed your business or your life?
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