Sometimes, an offer’s “estimated time to completion” is the main ingredient. I’ve seen a case where a couple of friends working in an attic could regularly out-compete “serious” firms six times their size while having a much higher price to boot.
Thanks to well-applied automation they got significantly faster in what they did (3D architecture). If the clients needed something to show the investors when they fly in 3 days, anybody offering cheaper and even nicer-looking illustrations that could only be delivered a week after the investors already left simply couldn’t compete at all.
What should be considered here?
– the existing relationship: the fewer times you expect to talk to this client in a year, the higher you can go. the extra costs: the tighter the deadline, the more money, risk, convenience, or ego have to be sacrificed to meet it, so price them in.
– the complexity: some rush jobs require more than you simply sleeping less.
As a guideline, 10 to 30% seems to be a conservative and safe amount for a rush fee, climbing to 50% if something about the request is particularly egregious.**
Oh, and if somebody tells you that the value of your work is the same no matter how fast or slow you deliver it, so you have no right to charge a premium for it – check if they would buy a truck full of Christmas turkeys on December 26th for its full price, and why they wouldn’t.**