[TheForge] Prices

[GRAF]

Andrew Vida wrote:
>
>
> GRAF wrote:
>>
>>
>> Andrew Vida wrote:
>>>     This is a really important point IMO.  One has to know when a 
>>> job is simply not worth doing.
>> Andy, I have several thousands of dollars of income from GOOD jobs 
>> that were generated by thankless, miserable little jobs.
>> The trick is not doing the miserable ones while leaving the good ones 
>> sit.
>> I just tell the pesky jobs owners that they can pay me $100 an hour 
>> if they need it right now, or $50 an hour if I can do it as I see 
>> fit. Either way I win.
>
>     Methinks you missed my point: those not worth doing are the ones 
> that cost you more than you make.  That is to say, the net present 
> value is less than zero.
Not at all. I am a bit selective as to who I do it for, but have created 
several lucrative customers, losing money the first time.
It is part of a strategy of course. While I have my foot in the door, I 
chat them up and maybe show them a few things I've done.
It works for me . In the end I do well enough.
>
>> That depends for me whether or not it is a "tuition piece".
>
>     I am not at all sure I would buy into this idea.  Work is work.
Sometimes the work involves learning to do something new. That is where 
the tuition comes in.
Ultimately I am worth more per hour, or at least can justify top rate 
more often, as my skills increase or my equipment improves. So the 
learning is more to my advantage than the customer's.
Either way I am paying to learn.
>
>> Spending two days learning to do something is little different than 
>> going to a school and dropping $1500 with travel, meals, class 
>> charges, other than  with the tuition piece I get to sleep with my 
>> wife at days end.
>
>     This is a backhanded way of say that you subsidize your customers 
> to some extent.  If that extent is small (subjective term) then if 
> it's OK with you, it sure is by me.  But small in my world better be 
> SMALL.
No,at least not any more than all the time any of us spend learning does.

The customer that comes for a piece once I have mastered something get 
charged full tilt.
Until then they are paying me to go to school. It is almost like getting 
a fellowship.<G>

Mike Graf
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