How To Charge More For Your Services Easily And Efficiently

Today, I’m going to show you techniques on how to charge more per hour (and per day) for the same amount of work as your competitors.

We’ll get down to exactly why some professionals are able to demand much higher prices for a similar amount of effort as others who are struggling to get their price point to where it needs to be, and how you can implement the same strategies.

Everybody Wants To Play With The Winners

My colleagues and I have been meeting with professionals and people in business a lot lately.

We found that many positions have a large disparity in price points – in other words, a lot of people in a niche are getting paid $10-$20 while a select few are demanding much, much higher prices in the range of thousands of dollars.

A good example is photographers. Most photographers don’t get paid that much for a job the requires so much attention to detail and added effort.

Many talented people are struggling to make ends meet in this market and yet there is a privileged group of photographers who can charge thousands of dollars for a few hours of work. How is this possible?

The first technique they use is the concept of “social proof”. Successful people in a niche who charge a lot are quick to advertise that they’ve worked with someone of some kind of social importance.

If a photographer has done a shoot with even a semi-famous celebrity, you’d better believe they blast that all over their portfolio in order to demand higher prices.

In your case, if you’ve worked with even one client who has some level of notoriety in your niche, even if you’ve done it for free – you need to be broadcasting this to the world as much as possible.

If you’ve gotten some notable results with this person, even more so. This is a great time to raise your prices. The technique of using social proof is not only time-tested, it consistently produces an expectation that you need to be paid more.

Back to our photographer example. You’d better believe that a major difference between the photographer who charges $3,000 an hour and $30 an hour is that higher priced photographer’s portfolio has the famous magazines they’ve worked with plastered all over it.

They actively pursue the advertisement (or at least appearance) of social proof in their work. It almost naturally follows that their private session cost goes up by quite a lot when this is the case.

How To Charge More For Your Services: Be The Absolute Best At Them

Another tactic to increase your prices that has been tested successfully is to focus on one very specific niche. For example, a photographer we met recently not only advertises their social proof, they only work within the fitness niche.

In other words, they strive to be the very best at taking pictures of just bodybuilders or athletes, rather than trying to be known for taking a picture of just “anything”.

If you combine the tactics of picking a specific niche and working with people who have a measure of social proof – i.e, famous bodybuilders – you can charge a lot more money because you’re the king or queen in the market.

Is this common? Yes, absolutely. Look at the doctors in your neighborhood, to use another example. The ones with the highest reviews on Yelp almost invariably charge the most.

If his or her office has a full staff, you’ll be charged even more to work with the specific figurehead doctor rather than just a staff member. Social proof + niche = higher prices, again.

Now the third common method of charging higher rates for your business is to become an absolute world class expert in a certain field. One of my friends is a physiotherapist and he demands extremely high prices because he is the best at fixing muscle tissue. He is undoubtedly an expert at what he does, and he gets paid for that ability.

So, how long does it take to become world class? How long does it take to become a leader in your niche?

It can take you as long as 15 years depending on the field, but it doesn’t have to. In some fields, you can become very skilled in just 3-4 years. I’ve seen people go from absolutely no skill whatsoever to becoming a world class expert in that short time.

Bet On Your Best Horse

How can you accomplish this? Well, the first step is to focus on ONE single thing and get frighteningly good at it.

Many people make the mistake (myself included) of trying to get good at 25 things at the same time. They step into business as if they’ll become a world class salesperson, marketer, manager, and YouTube personality in one year… while working at their current job.

It usually can’t be done that way. I’ve never seen it done that easily, if we’re talking about doing 80 things at once in such a short span.

While it could possibly work at some point, what I recommend is to just focus on one single business and just BUILD that up to a fantastic foundation.

This is because your’e looking for a winning offer. You’re looking for something you can multiply and scale without it becoming boring or a burden… and if it keeps growing, trust me, you won’t be bored.

Just stick to the one thing that you see delivers a good return on investment.

When you are finally really good at this “one thing”, because you’ve worked as hard at it… you can begin to expect those really stellar price points. Mind you, this could be for something as obscure as a limousine company or something as well known as a fitness guru.

The main point is that you want to become the best in your field and the clients will expect nothing less than to pay top dollar.

If you mix that with working with clients with a high social status AND a targeted niche, with time you will find your prices can increase with great success. If there’s anything you can take away from this advice, I only wish I’d taken it sooner.