Devan commented on the following stories on BizSugar
How to raise your prices without losing clients
"Thanks, Tiroberts! It's also a scary thing for me as well. For retaining clients, occasionally I'll do a little extra work at no extra charge "just because." I work on building a strong relationship with them -- professionally, but also get to know them as well so that A) I retain them better B) They refer me out C) When I raise my prices, they usually don't have a problem with it. "Why you should not mandate employees to check email after work hours
"Great points, Heather. I like to say that business owners work on bettering "work-life integration" while employees try to work on better "work-life balance" (or rather, separation). Communicating with your team and new employees what they expect from you in terms of work availability up front (even in the interview) is so important. Getting caught off guard after you get the job and finding you have to be available by email any time can hurt the employee/employer relationship quite a bit. Thanks, Heather!"5 Ways To Make A Great Impression in Business
"Thanks, Lyceum. Take a networking event for example. For me personally, it's asking questions beyond the typical "where are you from" or "what do you do." Instead ask questions like "Are you a Cubs or Sox fan (I'm from Chicago. ;) )" or something more personal, fun, and not boring. It makes conversation much easier to go from there, and they'll remember you for it. How about you?"Subscribe
How I figured out how much to charge when I started my business
"Absolutely! Well I could talk about this for a while, but I'll hit a few basics. ;) Well rule of thumb #1 that we stand by very strongly at our firm is to always charge for value vs. hourly. Or if you do it by project, make sure you have a well written out creative brief/scope of the project so if you go beyond that, you and the client know that it will cost more. Of course there's a lot of factors and variables that go along with figuring out your pricing (experience, industry, expertise, etc). But start with research looking for people who are doing similar work for you. Also, another way is to figure out how much money you could be saving or making the client for working with them -- and figure out your value based on that. I've heard some people say that their value that they charge is based on the ROI. So like 1:3 ratio or 1:5 ratio. But if you do go the hourly rate route (which I recommend for beginners) do research and see what other people are charging, and figuring out how much do you want to make a year, then figure out how many working hours that you will be working (not doing admin, marketing, or development), and figure out what the hourly rate would be for that. It's always a lot more than you think it should be. The time you take for doing admin/marketing/etc is included in your hourly rate. Hope that wasn't too confusing! "