One of the most stressful parts of starting a new project—at least for me—has always been figuring out what to charge.

I hate it.

I've done the discovery calls. Taken them through my sales process. Client seems locked in. But when it comes time to put a number on the page… suddenly, I’m second-guessing myself.

If I charge too much, I risk losing the project.

If I charge too little, then I'm leaving money on the table.

Classic conundrum.

So a few years ago I finally got fed up with all of the anxiety around this and dedicated some time building a system that would give me a predictable, reliable price every time.

I call it sweet spot pricing.

Not too hot, not too cold.

Optimized to charge as much money as possible WITHOUT significant risk of losing the project.

Now, it's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good. And certainly better than guessing every time.

And I feel pretty good about saying that sweet spot pricing has directly contributed to hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional revenue.

I highly highly recommend trying it out.
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The Old Way

For years, I defaulted to what most freelancers and agencies do:

Figure out how much time it's going to take to do the project, then multiply by my hourly rate and voila — my price. Look it has it's benefits. It’s simple. It’s predictable. Not too much thought here.

(This is called bottom up pricing, btw. Hours x Hourly = price.)

But I’ve always felt like it was the wrong way to do it.

Because no two projects are the same.

But even more important — no two clients are the same.
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Why bottom-up pricing doesn’t work

Think about it: the exact same project could be worth dramatically different amounts.

It's not abnormal for two different people to have massively different expectations about the price of the same project.

For example, I've charged $10,000 & $50,000 for the basically the same website.

There are just so many variables at play here, and simplifying your pricing to just two of them (hours and hourly rate), is not giving you a complete picture.

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Solving my own problem

So a while back, I decided to fix this problem for myself.

I built a simple framework that turned a 2 variable equation into a 10, 15 or 20 variable equation.

It was a pain in the ass to figure out, but when I did three things happened.

1. I felt a lot more confident about my pricing
2. I charged a lot more more often
3. And I won a lot more projects

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The variables

An example of some of the variables you should be weighing when pricing:

Client variables:

• Who the client is? (funded startup vs. bootstrapped creator vs. non-profit vs. healthcare, etc)
• How budget conscious do they seem in calls?
• What do they stand to gain from this project? (Revenue? Authority? Time savings?)
• If revenue, how much? (A lot? A little? What is the potential upside for them?)
• Etc

But also, don't forget about your variables:

• How busy are you right now?
• How hungry are you for work?
• Is this a client that could help you break into a new space?
• Is there a ton of backend work available if you win this project?
• Etc

If that doesn't make sense or seems a little murky, keep reading...

Point is, just asking yourself: "how much time is this going to take" is drastically under-simplifying the pricing equation. And it's going to lead to less projects won, and at a lower price per project.

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How to do it?

Now at first, my method was... simple.

I was just ruminating on these questions and then taking a wild guess — like, whatever felt right.

Scientific? No. But it actually still resulted in more money.

But over time, it evolved into something of a pricing algorithm—a way to calculate not just “the cost” but that tasty sweet spot where profitability and win rate kind of collide.

And recently, I’ve been playing around with turning this whole thing into a tool. Something that helps me figure out (scientifically) what to charge for a project.

I'm calling it scope concierge for now (we'll see)... but here's how it works:

• I tell the tool about my project (a quick questionnaire w/ like 15 questions)
• Based on the data, our algo applies multipliers based on 20+ variables
• Spits out three pricing options: conservative, intermediate, and premium
• Helps you decide where to land
• Builds your scope of work and proposal

I've been working on this for a while just as a fun side-project but it's finally starting to take some shape.

I recorded a quick demo if you want to see where it’s at:

​👉 Check out the walkthrough here​

It’s still early and not quite sure what i'm going to do with it but I’d love any thoughts and feedback.

If you’ve ever felt that pit in your stomach when trying to put a price on a project—you’ll probably relate to why I built this.

— Shane