Let's Talk About Working For Free and Discounting Prices (And Why I Think It's Okay to Do Both)
There are a lot of sweeping generalizations in the design industry that can make pricing projects a shame-inducing experience for even the most experienced designers.
Charge what you are worth! Never work for free! Don’t discount your prices!
Today I am going to walk you through my perspective on this topic because I think it differs from what you usually hear in this space. As always, this is my personal opinion and simply what I do in my business. I am sharing because I get asked about this a lot and want to provide a bit more explanation than “do whatever you want!”
Before we dig in, a couple of overarching themes:
1) Pricing is very personal.
2) I do not believe that your worth can be measured in dollars, which is why I find myself cringing a tiny bit every time I see “know your worth, then add tax!” – we are in the business of providing a service to clients that we get paid for, but don’t get it twisted – YOU are not your work. Period. If you are struggling with separating yourself emotionally from what you create, email me directly (olivia@oliviaherrickdesign .com) and I will give you a pep talk.
Okay, let’s dig in.
When I have worked for free
The most taboo topic in the design world, the general consensus is “DO NOT WORK FOR FREE.” But I find that that is unhelpful advice and the way that I run my business results in me doing a decent amount of work for free! Let’s unpack the specific scenarios in which I tend to provide free work.
Favor For a Friend: About five years ago I realized that I could no longer continue with a “Friends & Family” discount and switched to a new model where if I work with a friend or family member (to be totally frank, I generally try to avoid this in the first place) I do it for free. I found that if I gave a hefty discount, it still felt like (and was!) a big investment to them, so they expected red carpet service, and I felt like I was doing them a jumbo favor, so I wanted to fit them into the schedule and get some flexibility in return. In this new structure it is pretty clear that I am doing them a favor which I am more than happy to do, and there is a much better understanding of the situation at hand. By friend I mean inner circle friendships. You get the idea!
Gifts In Kind: An in kind gift is a donation of a service to a nonprofit organization. I try to do this as often as I possibly can and generally don’t like to talk about it a ton because I find it a bit off putting when brands are like JUST SO YOU KNOW, here is the *amazing, generous* work we are doing that we want to make sure you are aware of. I like to donate work to organizations whose mission/vision/values I align with or who are doing under-supported work. Generally I try to initiate these relationships and will reach out on my own and say “I love what you are doing, it is so inspiring to me, if you ever need help with anything, please let me know.” This also makes it easier to say no to the organizations who request free work because I am being really intentional with that pro-bono time each quarter.
Favor for a Client: If a client reaches out looking for something that takes me less than 30 minutes, I generally do not charge for it. Examples would be – “Can you save this specific illustration as a PDF (normally these types of requests are actually me just going to their Drive folder and sending a link to what they are looking for that is already there). My web designer wants an svg. Can you make my logo pink for breast cancer awareness month. I need my logo on a 15x15” square.” You get the idea. If I can’t do it, I let them know. And use your brain here – don’t get taken advantage of. That’s a baseline expectation and a judgement call that I know you can make for yourself, so you don’t need to hear me harp on that more. But my personal style is to help as much as I can as often as I can when people ask nicely. And people don’t always ask nicely. And to be honest, if they don’t ask nicely, I don’t always help! But when asked kindly for a small favor, I do not bill them for it.
Favor for a Potential Client: This is where it gets a little confusing. To be clear, again, this is my personal philosophy and you should do whatever is best for you. I sometimes do free work for potential clients. By potential clients I do not mean people who have reached out as an inquiry, but rather people I reach out to directly to offer help OR acquaintances/word of mouth connections who I might be in touch with via another client or a friend of a friend of a friend kind of scenario. Examples of this would be:
I offered to create podcast templates for a podcast right after they launched because they seemed overwhelmed. Took me an hour. Led to $15k in work with them in the next 60 days.
I offered to provide design feedback on documents a word of mouth connection had developed. Took me under 30 minutes. They valued the feedback so much they ended up hiring me to do the work.
A distant friend connection’s logo from Fiverr was determined to have been stolen and they needed a wordmark immediately. I whipped one up in an hour and didn’t charge them.
I offered to design a logo for free for an acquaintance in 2012. Since then I have done over $250k of work for their brand.
So what does this actually mean? It means that I sometimes provide free work for potential clients to be nice, but usually I provide free work for potential clients because I have found that it oftentimes leads to paying work. It has been true for me, time and time again, that providing a little bit of free help goes a long way in establishing trust and expertise.
A big piece of this puzzle is who you are helping out. To be frank, you need to like someone if you are going to be doing them a favor. The whole Anthony Bourdain “don’t work with a**holes” concept applies here big time. If you can’t sniff out problematic clients yet, let me know and I will write a red-flag blog post. Overall, the theme here is that you need to be able to discern whether or not a small investment on the front end has the potential to lead to work for you long term. NOT ALL favors lead to paying work. Sometimes they are just a drop of kindness in the bucket of life and you can consider it good karma and redemption for an industry that sometimes has a habit of letting people down (lookin at you, stolen Fiverr logos).
Moving right along!
When I have Discounted My Prices
So for this next section to really make sense I need to touch briefly on my general pricing philosophy. I do practice value-based pricing, which is rooted in assessing each specific project and situation as an individual set of circumstances that warrants a unique price based on the deliverables. If you don’t know what value-based pricing is I am happy to explain it more either in another blog post or if you email me directly. Or I can link you to the Futur video I first watched three years ago that really changed all of this for me. But my pricing philosophy takes it one step further as I consider a handful of other factors including:
How much will I enjoy this project?
Are there any red flags?
What else is going on in my life right now? Am I busy? Stressed?
What is the timeline?
Pricing is extremely personal, and while it’s common to hear “don’t discount your prices!” and “never negotiate with a client!” I do not abide by either of those rules.
I am trying to generate revenue over here. I think our society has made it difficult for women to say that out loud. There’s this expectation that everything we do needs to be “heart-led” at all times, that we can’t be running a business to make money, and that our business goals must stem from a place of passion and fulfillment. Have you ever heard of Farmgirl Flowers? The founder, Christina Stembel, has referenced this in several interviews – when people ask for her background they always expect (want) her to say that her grandma had a flower farm or she grew up working with flowers or she used to sketch bouquets in her elementary school journals. Nope. She saw an opportunity and set out to solve a problem for consumers because she thought it could be a profitable business.
To be clear – I love my business. It is extremely important to me. I truly believe that design is my calling in life. But at the end of the day, I am here to make a living. I solve problems for my clients. That is my work. I mention this because in order to really wrap your head around pricing that ebbs and flows, you have to remove your emotions and your ego from the entire process. I don’t have everything figured out, but this works for me, and I am happy to share it with you.
The possibility of occasionally negotiating on pricing requires an ability to read clients to determine if their project will be a headache, and also some level of self-acceptance and willingness to cast aside the sweeping pricing generalizations I referenced at the beginning of this post. There are no ribbons or gold stars available for refusing to discount your rates at any time. If it’s something that you want to do, that’s great! Truly. If you will never design a logo for less than $15,000, I support that 100%. But I also support you charging Chipotle $50,000 and your next door neighbor $750. And I support you discounting your rates when you really need or want or are feeling up for the work. If you think that large agencies don’t quote projects and then negotiate with clients, you are wrong. So stop shaming yourself for wanting the job. The catch is that you need to know where to draw the line in the sand and you have to be willing to walk away.
Okay, let’s get down to when I have discounted my rates.
When I have greater bandwith for work: My studio is located in Minnesota, so from November–April, outside of a bit of cross country skiing and the holidays, I don’t have a lot going on. I try to really lean into work during this time of year so that I can actually enjoy summer up here in the north, which means that during the winter I am much more likely to be flexible on pricing. In the summer I have a lot of competing priorities which means I want to work as little as possible so I can actually enjoy my life! I used to make it my goal to do ~80% of my revenue during the winter so the pressure was off during the warmer months up north. I have fixed hours now, because of childcare, so I don’t provide these discounts as often anymore because there isn’t really flexibility in my bandwith, but pre-child? Whew! I would fit in as many projects as I could take on without compromising quality. And I LOVED it.
When it is a quick turn project: At the heart of my studio’s transformation last year (took five months off + went from 60+ hours/week to 30 hours/week and still had my highest year of revenue yet) was a method that I used to track my hours in order to understand what projects were the best value. One of the many interesting things that came from this process was the realization that quick turn projects are my jam. Could not be a better fit. When I see an email that says “we need this in two days” – I light up inside. I had a client reach out to me a few weeks ago who needed a set of six social distancing graphics turned in 36 hours (they are a commercial printer for grocery and mass retail, so these graphics were going to be produced as floor decals to be sold to their hundreds and hundreds of clients). The budget was $2,000. I said yes. If they had asked me for an estimate without the quick deadline, I would have quoted higher than that, but with a firm deadline in place and guarantee of the project being wrapped in 36 hours, I was happy to make it work for them. A win-win for both parties. It is possible that you are someone who does not thrive in the chaos (I prefer to call it a rush!) of a quick-turn environment. If that is the case, or you don’t work quickly, accommodating budgetary constraints for truncated project timelines might not be the right fit for you, especially if it increases your anxiety. For me? It is the perfect fit.
When it pulls at my heartstrings: This past year I had three clients who, despite estimate expiration dates, emailed me A YEAR later saying “I can’t believe it, but I have been saving up for the past year and I finally get to send this email – I am ready to work with you!” – Eeeeeeek. Cue me covering my face at my computer, knowing my prices had increased by 3k and I was staring down having to write back saying “That is so great, but you need to keep saving, girlfriend!” In all three of these instances I explained the situation but said that I would be willing to accommodate the original price. I just did this because it felt like the right thing to do. I don’t ALWAYS do this – sometimes people follow up a few months later and I am booked out, or my prices have increased, and I hold my ground. But every once in a while it feels good to pay it forward in some small way. And every one of those three projects was a dream come true and produced such gorgeous projects for their brands.
All right friends, that’s a wrap. If I haven’t said it enough already, this is my personal pricing philosophy and it is important to do what feels best to you. But if you find yourself feeling trapped in rigid industry rules you see repeated in Facebook groups over and over again, this is your permission slip to find your own way and carve your own pricing path. Listen to your intuition, trust your gut, and good things will happen.
Cheers!