Recently Jonna Jerome at Wordswerk wrote an article about how to package your services, and it inspired me to talk about something I love—package pricing! Thanks, Jonna, for the spark!
It’s a question clients and colleagues ask me often: “Should I package my services?” My answer is a resounding yes. As a service provider for 20+ years, I’ve had packages for at least the past 10—and I know it works successfully! Without packages, I know for a fact I would have made less money, wasted more time, and been far more confused.
Why do I like package pricing?
Package pricing has made my business better over the past decade because:
- It removes a hurdle and saves time. I like starting a conversation with a prospect and knowing that they know what ballpark we’re in for these services. They know I’m not going to do a WordPress web design and development project for under 8k. Being past that hurdle provides a sigh of relief, and saves a bunch of time. Now we can talk about the fun stuff!
- It provides total transparency. With clearly-defined deliverables, package pricing leaves no room for confusion. It’s clear as day. Why beat around the bush? Why play cat and mouse? Who has time for that anyway…we’ve got WordPress websites to build!
- It makes the intangible easier to grasp. You can’t really touch a website. It’s not like buying a mango. But when we put something into a package, we give it shape. When we define things like deliverables and number of revisions, the offering becomes something meatier…something you can wrap in a bow.
- It gives people choices (and people like choices)! I’ve got two main packages. One is for when you just need website development. The other? For when you need design and development. Do you want a brownie, or a brownie sundae? (It depends if you want to supply your own ice cream, I guess.)
How can you do package pricing?
Here are seven tips that I’ve learned through having my own packages, and helping clients create packages for themselves:
1. Figure out what’s in your package.
This is more straightforward if you do a lot of the same work. I do only websites, and for most of my clients, the basic I design it package is perfect for what they need. I know the amount of time and effort that goes into it, and I know my price will make it profitable overall. It’s easier to define your packages after you’ve worked on different projects, so you can pinpoint the common elements. What is the offering that most people want?
2. Determine your package pricing.
A website is like a car. It can cost 10k, or 100k. There will always be somebody charging less, and somebody charging more. Figure out what feels good—and works financially—for you. This is more important than worrying about what the competition is charging. Start where you feel comfortable. The deeper you get into your area of specialty, the more you will feel comfortable charging in the future.
I see people who are hesitant to price packages because they’re afraid of losing work…but ask yourself: At what price point does that work become work you don’t actually want?
3. Consider the value of the deliverable—not just your hourly rate.
The idea is to come up with pricing that covers the amount of time you’re going to take, while also considering what the end value of the deliverable will be to your client. Developing a WordPress website takes me less time now than it did 10 years ago, but that’s because I have 10 additional years of experience! My prices have gone up, even though it takes me less time. So we are not dealing with a straight time for money situation here. If, however, the end value of the deliverable weren’t as high to a client—for example, if I were designing a social media graphic with less of a shelf-life—I would need to factor that into my pricing.
4. Don’t get stuck in the weeds (or inside your head) over one project.
When you do package pricing, you have to look at profitability over time. There might be one instance where you go way over the time you intended. You can’t get caught up on the one project that went sideways because you didn’t know. (You live, you learn, and you do better next time.)
5. If your projects really are more custom, consider why.
If you find that you’re estimating wildly different projects every time for every client, you might want to start thinking about why there is so much variability there. Does there have to be? Does it just make life harder and keep you from specializing? Is there a basic through-line between all of your projects that you can shape into a package?
If you have a few frequently-requested add-ons, you can define those as well. For example, I offer “You sell it,” “You attract them,” and “I maintain it”—because those aren’t inherent to every package, but clients often need them.
6. “Starting at” is super.
Sometimes your most popular package, as-is, won’t work for clients. They might need a whole lot more. Every now and then, a website project will need 50+ pages, and that’s a whole different ballgame. I can price that out based on everything I know. But if I did 50-page websites all the time, I’d just make that into a package. “Starting at” will leave room for unique situations.
7. Ensure they know your pricing, just in case.
After creating my packages, I also added a budget question in my contact form, so before we talk, I will know what their budget is. And just in case, I also bring the budget up immediately on our consultation by saying something like, “I see your budget is 10k” or “Were you able to check out my packages? Which one are you interested in?” This is part of my onboarding process (if you want to convert a prospect into a paying client with clarity, sanity, and confidence, check out my Client Onboarding Toolkit).
I hope package pricing brings you peace of mind, like it has for me! And if you need a wonderful WordPress website to display those packages on, let’s talk about it—but only after you look at my packages, first ;)
