subject: Internet Marketing - How Much Should You Charge for Your Professional Service? [print this page] Internet Marketing - How Much Should You Charge for Your Professional Service?
One of the very first things that a brand-new Internet Marketer will ask is what amount he or she should charge for the products or services that he or she is offering. This is in particular a hot topic amongst writers who are offering content and copy creation services to those who need them. Some folks seem to think that a writer should merely charge what the clients want to pay. This is usually really hard for those who are constantly told that only the lowest rates possible are fair. If you have been trying to figure out what amount to impose for what you have to provide, here is the way to figure it out.
The first thing you should do is write down all of your monthly payments. This consists of just how much you pay each month in rent or toward your mortgage, your utility bills, how much you spend on food, your cell phone bill, credit card payments, etc. Make sure you include the amount of cash you think you will spend on fun things such as dinners out and frivolous shopping trips. Take this amount and multiply it by 12. This is the amount of cash you will want to put in the bank annually. This is NOT the amount of money you need to make.
To figure out just how much you need to make from your clients take your annual total and add forty percent to it. This will give you sufficient money for covering taxes and different fees--after all, the money that you earn on the web will count as income--it needs to be reported to the IRS and taxes need to be paid on it. This extra forty percent can help cover the taxes for social security, Medicare, and many others. The amount you are considering right now: the expenses with forty percent added to it--is the amount of money you should make.
You possibly plan on doing work at least forty hours a week. This is a good quantity to anticipate, but it is important to note that you will only spend probably half of this work time performing duties for your clients. The rest of the time you will end up doing paperwork, advertising, etc. Why will this matter? Because it influences what amount you ask for. Your primary impulse is most likely to take the amount of money you need to make and divide it by fifty two and then divide that number by forty (which will help you figure out your hourly rate). Instead, you should be dividing by twenty-this is the amount of time you will be expending on client work.
Now that you know what amount of money you should charge per hour, from here the amount you charge for a project is simple to figure out. How long could it take you to produce articles or a sales page? Take the time it's going to take you to finish a job and multiply it by your hourly fee. This is the rate that you should be charging for your various projects.
