How to secretly find out what your competitors charge
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 56 seconds
When you’re first starting out as a freelancer, you may not know what to charge. There are ways to find out what hourly rate you should charge, but what about if you’re wanting to find out what the ‘industry norm’ is, even if they won’t openly tell you? What I am going to show you today is how you can find out your competitors prices so you can find the range you should keep your pricing in, in order to give your competitors a run for their money.
How to secretly find your competitors pricing
If you’ve looked around online to find out what exact prices are that people charge for the work you do and haven’t found solid figures, there’s a couple of ways you can find out. The first way is to check out Freelance Switch’s Freelance Statistic’s Report. It cost $19.99 and has a ton of information inside of it.
But what if you’ve looked that over and you want a more real-world approach (ie: knowing what the person does for a living, their quality of work and the exact prices they charge for the same work you’d be doing)? It’s as easy as sending an email.
Here’s what you do
The first thing you’ll need to do is set up a personal email account – one that isn’t attached to your business. Do not reference your business in the email name or anywhere in the email (signature).
After you’ve set the email address up, think of a project that you’d like to find out pricing on. For web designers, get a few links together to websites you like and put together an email requesting something that looks similar to those in style. For logo designers and print designers, adjust your emails according to your profession.
Make sure your email is as close to what you’d be doing as possible, this way you can find out exactly what other people are charging for the same work.
Now, find 10-15 of the top people in your industry and send them the emails; then you wait. Once you get responses from them, you can go over their emails, read their quotes and find out what they charge. At this point, you’ve got a solid base as to what the others in your industry charge for the work you will be doing.
An example email you can send
Below is a sample email that you can tailor to fit your needs.
Hey (insert name),
I was just checking out your site and I love your work. I’ve been thinking of starting a website recently and I wanted to know what the pricing would be for something like this:
I am in need of a blog design that looks similar to the following websites
- Website Name
- Another website
- Third website name
The main idea behind my site is that I want to discuss (insert topic here) and would like to have some social media integration (insert other options here).
A price quote for something like this would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
(insert name)
And that’s all there is to it. Within a week or so, you could get anywhere from 10-50 quotes, depending on how many people you actually contact.
What do you think – is this a clever idea or too ‘sneaky’?
Let us know in the comments what you think. Some might think the idea is a bit too ‘sneaky’ while others look at it like a clever opportunity to find out real world pricing for their projects.
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That is one way to do it alright. Haha pure evil
I’m kidding. Good way to find out though, but being a freelancer I know how it feels if you quote a good project and you never hear from the client again. It sucks.
Awesome article.
Regards,
Jacques van Heerden
I agree…it is really not a nice feeling getting asked for a quote and then never to hear from the client again. That’s why I wouldn’t want to do it to other either…
I would have to say this is not the way to go to find out what others are charging in your industry. I can spot these “hey I was just wondering” type of inquiries, anyway, and what I normally do is just respond with a quick price way above what I normally charge and not give it a second thought.
If I knew it was a freelancer trying to find out what I charge, however, then I don’t think I would take it lightly and would probably respond with a “nice” email. Sure, you could easily disguise yourself as a passer-by but I just would never do this myself nor recommend doing it at all.
The truth is your reputation dictates what you can charge. It takes building up a client base, a little marketing and then experimenting with price increases here and there. Unfortunately it’s a very inexact science and takes some time under your belt to master.
Hey Johnny,
I agree, I can tend to spot these types of emails as well. The main reason I wrote this article was to bring light to the subject, since I know it’s something that goes on in the community. I held my thoughts on it to see what the general consensus is on the subject, and it’s good to see I’m not alone in thinking that this is a pretty devious way of handling things.
Personally I’m not a fan of this approach. While it can help you to get some information, it’s deceptive. As a designer I don’t want to be getting fake quote requests from other people, I’d rather have someone ask me my opinion on how they should determine their rates and have a real conversation with them about the subject. Also, new designers will want to network with others in the industry, and it may be awkward to network with someone if you know that you just used them for information.
I think this is a rather dishonest way of finding that information. As far as I’m concerned its actually stealing. You’re taking all the effort that person has put into their pricing model from all of his/her experience. Not only are you stealing it, you’re putting more work on their plate, with no intention of ever following up.
Its rather sad to see this is how you guys would do business.
Here’s a crazy concept, just tell them the truth, they may or may not tell you, but you’ll probably find a few good will designers willing to help.
You know I’m really surprised you guys would put up a post like this. Why would anyone want to do business with you after reading this? If you’re willing to be dishonest with other designers, what would stop you from being dishonest with customers?
I had the intention of writing about how sketchy this idea was but I realized there is already a plethora of comments that are pretty congruent with what I think.
Bottom line, this practice is sketch-a-letch. If someone did this to me I think I’d sign their email up for a bunch of spam.
Wow how much politically correct nonsense.
Trying to find out what the price for something is, is definitely not stealing. Yes you are maybe taking away 10 minutes of the designers time to read your email, but that’s it, he/she would probably spend that time on their Facebook/Twitter anyway.
What are you scared of exactly? That ohhh, someone would fine out how cheap/expensive your work is? And how they can have better prices than you?
Seriously, if your work is good enough, you shouldn’t be scared of someone asking the price, whether it’ a real or fake client.
” Yes you are maybe taking away 10 minutes of the designers time to read your email, but that’s it, he/she would probably spend that time on their Facebook/Twitter anyway.”
Even if that was true, who made your price quote more important than ten minutes of someone else’s time regardless of what they would’ve done instead.
How about just asking? Seems.. Much easier.
Congratulations — you’ve wasted another designers time and energy because you’re so ignorant you can’t work out what you’re own value as a designer is.
Lame.
I’m sure other industries besides ours use this method of weeding out competitor rates, so it’s not like this is news…. everyone has their opinion.
IMHO, it sheds a poor light on your own business. You can develop a dishonest reputation, and you’re screwing yourself out of a possible healthy referral from that freelancer should he/she be too busy for a client. Your approaching the designer might make him/her aware you exist and what your services are, so that referral can be possible and you work on your own network of resources.
Just be honest. It might actually pay off in the end!
Last month I got email from collegue, but she make the mistake to ask me about all types of services and it looks that the writer is a person from my business because clients don’t have so detailed knowledge about our work.
So the conclusion is to ask some stupid questions to sounds like a client
No, i dont think that i need this way to find out what other are charging. Whenever i get a client request mail, i read the mail many times before replying. The client writing style can describe the client best (whether he is really interested in the work or just laming). So after having a little observation of client personality, i then quote accordingly at higher or low rate.
Funny enough, I did something similar years back, but with what I considered to be a genuine intention.
I was starting out and responding to mainly Craigslist ads for gigs. I did this alongside my regular 9-5 job so I didn’t have the time to really delve into a full out marketing plan. One day I decided to write a Craigslist ad using the same kind of request that I would generally respond to. I got a chance to see what others would respond b/c I knew these were the emails I was competing against. Doing that helped realized that finding gigs on Craigslist was not the best way to scour for potential gigs. Was it sneaky? I guess it’s subjective.
If a competitor did the same to me I wouldn’t get upset b/c it’s business. It would be no different from going to a competitor’s website since many of the ones I’ve been to list their prices on their site anyways. It’s also called “market research.”
That’s really “Guerrilla”-style
Don’t be a jerk, just ask. 95% of the time other designers will be willing to tell you.
Plus… it will save you from the horrible karma that following the advice of this post will get you.
haha. It dosen’t really matter what the other designers charge because you both are two different people with a different life. That designer may live in California and has to pay a lot for his family and so fort and you might live in a small town and have to pay little. Charge what you think will make YOU happy.
HOOOO… !!!… I just received a request for a quote very similar to your example… I feel trapped!
I agree with most of the above comments which are not in favour of this idea. Anyways, as a Web Designer or Company I would like to share how to safe-guard yourself against such things, and we follow that at our organization…
First and foremost, never get over-excited about any (true/false) requirement. It’s always best to KYC (know-your-customer) approach. Whenevr we get any unknown requirements we post following response….
————————
Hello,
Thank you for your enquiry
Kindly share your contact number, our representative will get in touch with you to understand your requirement precisely. Having precise requirement will help us give you realistic quote. Please provide following information…
Your Complete Name:-
Your Contact Number:-
Your City of Residence:-
Thank you and looking forward for your response. Alternatively you may also get in touch with us on following contact details.
Best Regards
—————————————
If the customer/enquiry is genuine they will surely respond. If don’t just forget the requirement and safely assume its one of these SO CALLED “guerrilla”.