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It took me a while to understand this & really implement this. As a designer I am selling something which is intangible & subjective.

“How much do I deserve?” – I always asked myself this question before giving a quote for my services. And almost always, I ended up quoting way less & at the end delivering way too much value in exchange. As a creative you’re always in this bubble, you always undervalue your own potential. You always question yourself.

At the end of the day, you’ll still have issues, your client might still be unhappy with the design & yes you’ll still be doing 100’s of revisions. So why not charge for it?

In any case, If a client doesn’t see your value & is always bugging you to lower your prices OR keeps questioning your process – you should probably let such a client go.

Recently I read this quote by Chester Louis Karrass.

“You Don’t Get What You Deserve. You Get What You Negotiate.”

Early in my freelancing career, I built a website for 200$. Fast forward 6 months I built a similar website with the exact same requirements for 800$. I should have learned my lesson but I was a lazy fuck who did not get the hint.

Anyway, finally I understood. With all my clients & every paid gig I had ever done, I was never paid based on how much work I did or what I did. It was always how much I negotiated. The thing with design or any such creative field is that you cannot precisely determine exactly how much you should charge or how much time will it actually take you to finish a particular project. You can only estimate. And after a certain point of time your estimate gets really good. But it is never accurate.

Understand your value. Negotiate. Go get it!

Prateek Katyal

Prateek Katyal

I create ‘stuff’ on the interwebs ? ‘Stuff’ ? photos, videos, websites ?

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