You should never give your customers a deep discount with the hope of “earning their business”. It hardly ever works. If it did, deep-discount airlines would still be in business today.

More often than not, by giving away the store, you’ll go bankrupt.

Believe it or not, even in the heart of a recession people have enough money to pay you at your own rate.

When people WANT to buy something bad enough, they find the money from somewhere even if they need to borrow it -- don’t you?

If you are not paid enough it’s not because people don’t have money but because you did not communicate the value of your service well enough.

Until you understand and accept the truth of this fundamental fact you won't be able to start making real money in your business.

Here’s a very important reason why dropping your price may actually backfire on you:

People rate more expensive items and services more highly.

In general consumers think and genuinely feel that a more expensive product is more valuable than a cheaper product with exactly the same characteristics. That's human psychology.

Here is something I’ve heard from the legendary Direct Marketing Guru Dan Kennedy:

In California a scientific test was conducted on athletes who use performance enhancing sports drinks.

Two comparable groups of athletes were given  exactly the same drink, with identical chemical composition.

One group was told that it was a very expensive product, developed after long years of research at the lab.

The other control group was fed the story that it was a “very affordable” drink. The impression was created that there was nothing special to it.

Would you believe that the group that was sold the expensive product athletically performed much better than the other control group?!

If you want happy clients, charge them what you are worth, but only AFTER you have a chance to study the project and explain (pre-sell) the kind of value you’d bring to the overall assignment as a trained and successful professional.

Make the case that you’re not a “Cost Center” but a “Profit Center” for the business in question. Otherwise you’ll be chasing one cheap hack job after another since there’s no end to lowering your fees and prices. It will be a RACE TO THE BOTTOM where there are no winners -- the customers included. You have to nip that spiral in the bud, with courage, conviction, and full belief in your own worth.

You can compete for value in life but never for the price. Sell the value of your service, not its fee. It always pays to remember that.

Visit http://www.how-to-write-anything.com for tips and tutorials on how to write for success in life.

(Public domain photo courtesy of Wikipedia.)