Which is worth more, Kind of Blue from Miles Davis, or the third Boston album?
It depends on your taste. I hope we can agree, though, that the fact that Miles spent four days on his album and Tom spent eight years on his is irrelevant.
Sometimes, we buy the story of inconvenient creation. The carrots at the farmerâs market or a hand-crafted piece of pottery is worth more because we know the focus and care that went into the creation of an item.
But software isnât worth more when itâs hand-coded, and WhatsApp didnât get acquired for billions of dollars because they had thousands of employees.
On the other hand, when British Petroleum paid Landor millions for a new logo, the meetings and effort and deniability were part of what they were paying for. The Nike logo isnât powerful because they spent a lot of time or money on itâŠ
Freelancers are close to their work, and itâs easy to tell ourselves that what we sell is our effort. Thatâs an error. Thereâs rarely a correlation between effort and value.
Even if you charge by the hour, youâre not selling hours. Youâre selling something clients can use.
Clients will pay more for something useful than something that was difficult.
