Let’s start with a quiz…
If you answered five; paperclips; red, yellow and blue; the back of the tongue; and gas, liquid and solid, then you would have got full marks in any school exam. But you would have been wrong.
Do you want to sell your products or your work for free? I’m sure you don’t. But it happens all the time. Customers want what you have to sell and pay you nothing for it. What should you do when customers want your work for free?
Be ready with a response. This recently happened to a client of mine. My client prepares very well for prospect meetings. He uses some expensive business analytic tools to generate reports about their business. Prospects are very impressed to learn the breadth of his knowledge about their business.
Generation X has a gripe with pulse takers, zeitgeist keepers and population counters. We keep squeezing them out of the frame.
This overlooked generation currently ranges in age from 34 to 49, which may be one reason they’re so often missing from stories about demographic, social and political change. They’re smack in the middle innings of life, which tend to be short on drama and scant of theme.
But there are other explanations that have nothing to do with their stage of the life cycle.
Gen Xers are bookended by two much larger generations – the Baby Boomers ahead and the Millennials behind – that are strikingly different from one another. And in most of the ways we take stock of generations – their racial and ethnic makeup; their political, social and religious values; their economic and educational circumstances; their technology usage – Gen Xers are a low-slung, straight-line bridge between two noisy behemoths.
The new product pitched to Whirlpool Corp. WHR executive Marc Bitzer three years ago wasn’t all that new. Whirlpool had tried to sell two previous versions of the device, which was designed to clean clothes that didn’t need much cleaning. Both flopped.
So, when about 20 designers and technicians came to Bitzer in July 2011 to propose yet another iteration of the same gadget, he was prepared to nix it.
“I was lukewarm, very honestly, because I had seen excitement before,” recalls Bitzer, who oversees North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for the home appliance giant.
Within two hours, Bitzer was a cheerleader for something called a Swash. He was converted by devotees who’d traveled from the Cincinnati headquarters of Procter & Gamble Co.
Three months ago, Swashes developed jointly by Whirlpool and P&G started showing up in select Bloomingdale’s stores and Delta airport lounges. Salespeople explained how the Swash, a four-foot-high, steel-and-plastic box shaped like a radiator, could in just 10 minutes unrumple a cocktail dress or whisk cigar stench from a sport jacket, almost as if they’d gone through a wash cycle or a trip to the dry cleaner.
Online ads and videos said the Swash would cut dry cleaning bills in half by letting people re-wear dress shirts, sequined dresses, wool sweaters, and other clothes they’d normally toss in a hamper after one wearing or, in the case of $300 designer jeans, never wash at all.
Asking for a raise is never easy.
Requesting one when you’re a freelancer is downright scary — the client could immediately stop working with you and turn to your less expensive competition.
As I outlined in the first part of this series, how you set your rates should be determined by your expenses, expertise and how you want to spend the one fixed variable in this whole process: your time.
After I outlined the various ways you can use to determine how much to charge a potential client or what rates you’re willing — and unwilling to accept — let’s take a look at how you can increase your fees.
1. Track your time.
Time management expert Laura Vanderkam, who has often provided wonderful advice for my stories, says that you should know how much time your activities take. Having learned this from her while writing an article a while back, I have been following this advice religiously, to my great benefit.
We get it. You’re starting a new businesses and you’re strapped for cash. There are a million questions going through your head. We empathize with bootstrapping entrepreneurs and small-business owners everywhere, and today we explore meaningful ways that add up where your business can save money in the early phases. That said, every small-business owner and entrepreneur has a unique set of circumstances that pertains to their business, industry, strategy, and execution. Here we will outline some of the key choices, some obvious, some less obvious, on ways you and your small business can save money.
Where is your business located?
The cost of living cannot be ignored when you’re looking at starting a business. While the glamour of the big city lights and talented potential workforce might be appealing, it might not be the best place for you to start a business. The cost of creating a startup in San Francisco or New York versus a small town in the Midwest needs to be taken into consideration. Having lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Madison, Wisconsin, it’s far easier to start a business in Madison, WI from a cost perspective.
Freelancers often wonder how much they should charge. It’s a thorny dilemma: Quote too high a price, and the potential client may decide to hire someone else. Go with a lower number, and you may end up earning less than you could have.
That’s why you’ll see freelancer forums and discussion boards peppered with questions about how much the poster should quote for a potential gig.
But they’re going about it all wrong. While, yes, it helps to know the general price range for certain types of work, the reality is that the range can be quite wide.
For instance, writers for content mills may earn as little as $15 a post, writers for esteemed magazines could earn $20,000 for a lengthy story, and some authors can receive millions for a book advance. Even for articles of the same length — say, 1,000 words — some outlets pay as little as $100 and others pay as much as $2,000 or more.
Large tablets give you more screen space to work on, but they can really weigh you down on your daily commute. Fortunately, opting for a smaller tablet doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice power or great software features. There are tons of pint-size slates that offer zippy performance and features such as multi-window multitasking, stylus integration and even a fingerprint scanner for added security. Read on for a list of the best business tablets with displays smaller than 8.5 inches.
The Good Samsung’s Galaxy S5 excels at everything that matters — Android 4.4 KitKat OS; a bright, beautiful display; blistering quad-core processor; and an excellent camera experience. In addition, Samsung’s efforts to streamline its own custom interface and reduce pre-installed bloatware pay off.
The Bad The Galaxy S5 is a only small upgrade over the Galaxy S4. The fingerprint scanner can be confusing to use, and the heart-rate monitor is a niche feature at best. In some regions, the Galaxy S5 costs significantly more than rival top-rated handsets.
The Bottom Line Subtly improved and smartly refined, the Samsung Galaxy S5 is a superior superphone that hits every mark but the sharpest design.
Apple reported its fiscal 2014 fourth quarter results on Monday, and in a surprise to absolutely no one, iPad sales are down again.For the third consecutive quarter, iPad sales have declined year-over-year. On a call with analysts, Apple CEO Tim Cook positioned the decline in sales as “a speed bump, not a huge issue.” Still, Cook conceded that this isn’t where Apple wants to be. “We want to grow. We don’t like negative numbers on these things.” That need for future growth is probably one of the reasons Apple realigned its iPad offerings last week.
Dispatches From The Front 