In general, apart from value-based pricing, there is the
- input-based pricing logic: it costs as much because it took me x hours and y costs to do this
- output-based pricing logic: it costs as much because you get x and y and three revisions on top of that
These are classic, but there’s also a “middle ground” between these two, and I call it “stand-in pricing”: it costs as much because it would take YOU, Mr. [[Client]], at least x hours to do this, and your hours are expensive.
There is no mention of how much time it would take me (the [[expert]]) to do the job because that’s beside the point. It may take me minutes to do because of all of the templates, experience, or connections I have ready, but it also took me years to get here.
It also avoids being based on the amount of output – some projects take a long time to do for an unskilled person but don’t produce much stuff worth showing off.
So – the least painful method for the [[Client]] is to spend the money equivalent to what they would be forced to surrender anyway if they tried doing it themselves.
If you have something you can offer that’s quick and easy for you, but is risky, hard, and boring for clients, you can try figuring out how long it would take them to do it, look at their price or the normal price per hour in their industry, and then calculate a price for this using the stand-in method.