Part Three: The engine · Chapter 10
Scoping and pricing your first jobs.
Define what the client is buying, calculate a price you can survive, control changes and protect your route to payment.
More first attempts at paid work die here than anywhere else.
Not through lack of technical skill. Through quoting badly, defining nothing and then working seventy hours for £400 while the client keeps asking for one more small change.
You cannot price what you have not defined.
Define the work before you say a number aloud.
The scoping problem
“I need a website for my business.”
Somewhere inside that sentence is between eight and eighty hours of work.
Which end of that range is correct depends on questions neither of you has asked yet.
Content and assets
Do they have the written content, logo files and photographs?
Functionality
Do they need e-commerce, online booking, payments—or all three?
Ownership and maintenance
Who will update the site after launch, and what ongoing support do they expect?
Existing infrastructure
Is there an existing site, domain and hosting account—and can anybody find the login details?
The scoping conversation
Twenty minutes, on the phone or in person.
Email makes it too easy for a client to describe an imagined solution. A conversation allows you to uncover what currently happens and where the real problem sits.
01
What happens now?
Ask them to describe, step by step, what happens when a customer wants to buy or book.
02
What causes the most frustration?
Find the part that wastes time, loses sales or repeatedly creates complaints.
03
What would make the work worthwhile?
Ask what would have to change for them to consider the money well spent.
04
Does it need to be ready by a particular date?
Ask why that date matters. A real event or operational deadline is different from an arbitrary preference.
05
Who else must approve it?
Discovering a business partner’s opinion after you have built the project is a specific kind of misery.
You have bought yourself thinking time and separated defining the work from quoting it. That is the single most useful move in this chapter.
Writing the scope
One page, in plain English, with five sections.
01
What they will get
Make every deliverable specific and countable. Write “a five-page website”, then name the five pages, rather than promising only “a website”.
02
What is not included
List content writing, photography, logo design, staff training, ongoing changes and anything mentioned once as a “maybe”.
03
What you need from them—and when
List text, images, logins and access, with an actual date beside each requirement.
04
The timeline
Count the working days from the moment their materials arrive—not automatically from today.
05
The price and payment terms
Give one total and state when each part of it is due.
Send the scope and ask the client to reply confirming it. That reply is your agreement.
Pricing
Three rules for your first paid projects.
Rule one
Price the job, not the hour
Hourly pricing punishes you for becoming faster and invites arguments about how long the work should have taken.
Give one number for the defined outcome.
Rule two
Calculate your floor
Estimate the hours honestly, add 50 per cent because the estimate is wrong, then multiply by the minimum hourly rate you will accept.
If the price is too low, raise it or reduce the scope.
Rule three
Charge a deposit
Take 50 per cent before starting and 50 per cent on completion.
If 50 per cent feels impossible on a first job, take 25 per cent—but take something.
Your private calculation
Pricing floor
Keep this calculation to yourself. It is the minimum price below which the work no longer makes sense for you.
If the calculation produces less than you would earn in a shop, either the price must rise or the scope must shrink.
A deposit is a filter, not merely cash flow.
Clients who refuse to pay any deposit are, with remarkable consistency, also the clients who fail to send content, stop answering emails and resist paying at the end.
A deposit removes the worst clients before they cost you a month.
Scope creep—and what to say
Say yes to the idea. Put it outside the current job.
Scope creep happens on almost every project and usually without malice. The client thinks of something new, and it appears small from their side.
Warm, unbothered and firm. You have not rejected the idea or behaved awkwardly. You have simply declined to work for free.
Say it the first time scope expands, and it rarely happens a third time.
The invoice
One page containing eight things.
An invoice does not require expensive or specialist software.
01
Your details
Your name, address and trading name, if you use one.
02
The client’s details
The business name and address—not only the person you usually email.
03
A sequential invoice number
Start at 001 so both sides have an unambiguous reference.
04
The date issued
The date on which you send the invoice.
05
A description of the work
Use wording that matches the scope: “Booking system installed on existing site, per scope dated 3 March.”
06
The amount due
Show the total, deposit received and remaining balance so the arithmetic is visible.
07
An actual payment date
Write the date you expect payment rather than making the client calculate “14 days”.
08
How to pay
Include the account name, account number, sort code and invoice number to use as the payment reference.
A word processor, spreadsheet or free invoicing application can all produce this. Send it as a PDF so it cannot be edited accidentally.
Send the invoice on the day you deliver.
Do not wait until the end of the month or until you get around to it. The client’s enthusiasm cools after delivery, and waiting gains you nothing.
When they do not pay
Know the sequence before you need it.
Most people pay. Some are slow, and eventually somebody will stop responding. A predetermined sequence prevents you from improvising while annoyed.
+1
The day after it falls due
Send a short message with no edge:
“Hi, just checking this one didn’t slip through. Invoice 004 was due yesterday; details below.”
+7
One week later
Be slightly firmer and telephone them if you have a number. Small businesses often respond differently to a polite call than to another email.
+14
Two weeks later
State the date by which you expect payment and explain what happens next.
→
Beyond that
Decide whether further recovery action is proportionate. Use current official guidance if you consider statutory interest or a formal claim.
What happens at two weeks depends heavily on what you have not yet handed over. Your position is weak if everything has already been deployed under the client’s account and every login has been transferred.
That is the argument for completing the final handover after final payment rather than before it.
The genuinely useful lesson
Payment problems usually begin before the work does.
Almost everybody who does not get paid can identify a warning sign they ignored at the beginning.
- No deposit
- No written scope
- No clearly identified decision-maker
- A client who would not confirm anything in writing
- A rushed start before the materials or access existed
The appendix contains a fuller client red-flag list.
When you get it wrong
You will underquote.
Everybody does.
Finish the job at the price you agreed and take the lesson. Trying to renegotiate a fixed price you set yourself halfway through the project destroys trust and usually the relationship with it.
Raise your price on the next one. That is what the first job is for.
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Next: Finding the first three people who’ll pay you
Chapter 11 moves from defining the offer to finding the first people willing to discuss buying it.