Rates exert gravity. If you charge more, you’ll spend your time talking to more sophisticated clients, working in better businesses, specializing in projects close to the money. These are compounding advantages. If you charge less, similar dynamics apply.
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A lot of low-sophistication freelancers get trapped in a cycle where their rates mean that they are hired by bozos, and then stiffed by bozos, because bozo. So they spent their time chasing bozo bucks, not getting better at delivery or pipeline management.
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Your community becomes other people whose businesses are constantly on the knife’s edge. If you experience success or threaten to, they will (not necessarily purposefully) try to sabotage you (e.g. by talking down your rates or by introducing clients who you should not talk to).
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The discourse in your community becomes toxic about money (hiya, artists). Good operators leave. The local socially acclaimed experts are not good at operating businesses (if they were, they would have exited, almost by definition).
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Folks sometimes ask me what to do if they find themselves in a bad market, like undifferentiated web design for local businesses. The right answer is probably “Leave.” Take skill set, add to it, apply to a better market. This rarely gets implemented.
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Replying to @patio11
You usually give specific advice, so, I feel like I can ask: how would one go about doing it? I.e., leaving de low money market?
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Replying to @tonnydourado
I mean, the way to not make WordPress sites for restaurants for $250 each is to stop telling restaurants you’ll make them a website for $250. The more interesting problem is “What next?”, where you find the best leveraged business to service with WP skills.
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Replying to @patio11 @tonnydourado
It’s probably, unlike a restaurant, a business which takes leads through its website. (Insurance our roofing contractor or real estate or...) So your Day 1 plan is “I can make you a site which gets more leads” and then you specialize in that and related business outcomes, not WP.
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The reason my consultancy worked isn’t primarily that I got really good at Rails or even email; it’s that I got good at applying Rails and email to they key points of leverage in B2B SaaS businesses.
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