#003
Welcome to this week's edition of Freelance Fuelwhere, as always, we share curated content that will hopefully inspire your business or get you started.
Today we look at decoy pricing, how Mark Cuban made his first dollars through RTFM - and how you can do the same, the art of saying no and protecting your time, lessons in great work, and recommended tools.
Let's get started.
/Jannik from Factofly
🕊 Decoys and prices
Last week we talked about how you can use anchor pricing to get the really good deals.
But there are several tricks you can use to sell your expensive solutions.
In close relation to anchor pricing, there is also decoy pricing.
In short, the decoy effect is about introducing a third less attractive option - the decoy - that influences how the original options are interpreted by your customer.
The decoy is so-called "asymmetrically dominated" and is positioned so that you have to see a doctor if you choose it over the target it is set against - think "buy 1 for 10 kr, or 2 for 12". On the other hand, it is only slightly worse than the other option it is set up against.
When you go to the movies, you typically experience the decoy effect in this way:
In this case, taking the big popcorn seems like a no-brainer.
If we wanted to boost sales of the medium package instead, we would have moved it closer in price to the small and created more distance to the large variant.
You can use the decoy effect to focus on your hero product, but always make sure you test the structure of your different packages so you know what works for you.
It can help your customer navigate and make the choice to go with you. Not to mention, it's a trick that can boost your revenue 💸
📔 RTFM
If you've seen the American version of the Lion's Den, Shark Tank, Mark Cuban is hardly a new name on your radar.
Cuban stands today with a staggering net worth on the heavy side of $5 billion, but the way he made his first dollars can be boiled down to an acronym and popular internet slang: RTFM.
Read The Fucking Manual!
In his first company, MicroSolutions, the business foundation was created
And it worked.
MicroSolutions was sold for $6m in 1990, landing Mark Cuban around $2m after tax. Not a bad start.
People are lazy as hell, so there is still money to be made by reading the manual and learning. Today, we see money being made by teaching others how Midjourney (image based AI) works. This course costs €15, with knowledge that can basically be found in Midjourney's own user guide.
So here's today's lesson: Where are your opportunities to read the manual and teach others what you know? Making information easily accessible to others is a lucrative art. Even if they can "just" read it themselves.
(Side note: there's even a page dedicated to RTFM, with one long rant about why people should read the manual - readthefuckingmanual.com)
🙅♀️ How to say no
Whether you're a freelancer or not, your biggest asset is your time.
What you actively choose to spend time on - and not spend time on - is what largely determines the joy of your work (and the rest of your life, for that matter.)
That's why one of the most important and undervalued tools is the ability to say no.
👎 No to customers you can never satisfy.
👎 No to projects that don't follow your values.
👎 No to pointless and long meetings.
The art of saying no will free up a lot of time for you. But it must be done delicately.
So here you have a template that can protect your time without burning bridges.
Copy/paste when there are less attractive projects knocking at your door:
Thank you for thinking of me for [Assignment]. I really appreciate it and will usually chase such an opportunity.
Unfortunately, [project 1], [project 2] and [project 3] take up all my time and I don't have the capacity for more tasks at the moment.
Please don't take it personally. I'm (luckily) in a situation where I have to say no to several other projects in order to deliver on [projects 1, 2 and 3].
Feel free to come back again in a few months and my calendar might look more open.
In the meantime, you might try reaching out to X. He/she might be able to help you in the here and now.
Again, thank you for thinking of me. Good luck with [project].
🖖 How to do great work
⚙️ Recommended tool: Loom
In addition to protecting your time, there is one tool you can use to minimize the use of meetings.
The vast majority of meetings are really just passing on information, and clients especially want to be kept in the loop and know what's happening (read: what they're paying for).
Loom may have been there before, but it deserves a rerun nonetheless.
Record your screen with a video of yourself. It's easy and straightforward, and if you want to score extra points with your customers, give them a short video update at regular intervals so they feel looped in.
Loom's freemium model allows you to create 25 videos of up to 5 minutes each before you have to dig the mole out of your pocket.