Comments on: Why You’re Undervaluing Yourself (And How to Stop)

By: Kirk

Kirk — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:58:49 +0000

WOW great post!! Probably one of the best blogposts I’ve ever read… seriously tho.. very cool!

By: Ali Luke

Ali Luke — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:15:48 +0000

Awesome image – thanks for the link! My writing-week seems to be going a bit like that… though I did want to do the things I’d taken on.

Hope you find plenty of clients who totally understand why you’re worth the money!

By: Becca

Becca — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 04:19:50 +0000

Yup, brilliant article: hear, hear. Applause all round

My favourite visual depiction of this is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchbreath/4194962172/ – the Killer Jellyfish of Graphic Design Favours. Hits the nail on the proverbial. I have this printed out and on my desk as a constant reminder to never take on a non-paying design job again, as by my estimates, the last one I did for free was worth well over $1000 (briefing, research, creative time, draft preparation, travel, proofs, consultations, corrections, overtime etc).

Now I’m working mainly as a swimming instructor, which may be an utterly different field… but I’ve also had to justify the cost for private lessons. I’ve just written back to a potential client, who was enquiring whether I’d be willing to be paid less; I replied thusly: “If I drop the fee, so too will drop my ability to make a living as a professional swimming instructor. It also sets a precedent for selling my teaching short. I know I am *good* at teaching swimming, and have spent many hours honing my skills to do this. There’s learning the fundamentals and complexities of swimming; accommodating different learning styles & adapting my teaching style; various forms of communication; working in challenging circumstances; taking professional development courses; keeping my skills and qualifications up to date (which I have to pay for myself). And practising my arms off. I get that it’s costly, but it’s hard for me to negotiate how I earn my bread and butter.”

Thanks for helping me to clarify my position. Good on ya!

By: Natasha

Natasha — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:29:03 +0000

VERY good advice. It is the pricing of my product (handcrafted necklaces) that is the hardest for me, because I started to do it for fun, and am now selling mostly to support my bead addiction and make more! A bit of advice I used was to take the cost of supplies, double it, and consider that the minimum price to charge. It really is so hard to put a dollar value on your own talent.

By: Ali Hale

Ali Hale — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:58:53 +0000

Thanks JC. Yeah, I found it very weird the first few times I got paid for posts. Congrats on reaching that stage, and glad you found this article!

By: Ali Hale

Ali Hale — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:58:13 +0000

Totally – I find that a bit with writing. Sometimes, a piece which looks “simple” and which is short is actually incredibly hard!

By: Michelle Mach

Michelle Mach — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:27:12 +0000

Really nice post! I write how-to instructions for crafts and part of my job is to make things look easy. In other words, I save the time of the reader so that she can avoid using the wrong materials or doing steps in the wrong order. But just because the end result looks easy doesn’t mean it was necessarily easy to get there!

By: JC

JC — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:56:49 +0000

I’ve been writing for the web about 2 years now. I run my own website and have been guest posting but it’s up until recently that I’ve begun getting paid for my work. Initially, it was the scariest thing – accepting money for something I was doing anyway.

I’ve also learned how to customize websites after hacking around with all of mine for the last year or so. Over the past few months, I’ve been getting paid to do it for others. It’s like this article was written for me but I wasn’t ready to read it until now.

It really puts the way I view my creative abilities into perspective. Thanks Ali.

By: Wood Talk 65

Wood Talk 65 — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:10:55 +0000

[...] Around the Web: Great article sent in from David J. Ulschmid at WispWoods: Undervaluing Yourself and How to Stop [...]

By: Ali Hale

Ali Hale — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:35:46 +0000

Ginger, thanks for sharing that — really fascinating (I know nothing about hats, though I had come across the term “milliner” before.) And trust me, if I was buying a hat, I probably wouldn’t notice any of the little niggles that you would.

When you’re in business, profit and time spent really does matter. I could spend hours agonising over the exact word choice and sentence structure in every blog post I write … but if my editors and readers aren’t going to care either way, what’s the point?

The book sounds great — I’ll put it on my list… (I have way too many books I’m meaning to buy & read at the moment!)