Package your way to bigger paydays: (thread)

What's the difference between a designer that sells time by the hour and a designer that gets paid a handsome fee upfront?

Packaging.

The designer that gets paid upfront packages themselves as a solution to a specific problem.

The designer that gets paid by the hour claims they can solve any problem, one hour at a time. (I still haven't met any that can.)

A real world example:

I started a creative agency a few years back that would take on any type of creative work.

We *responded* to demand, no process, no compounding learning we could apply. We guessed time and materials and prayed it resolved itself before we blew the budget.

A painful year or so later, the model changed to focus exclusively on "visualizing value" - (cc: @visualizevalue)

We *create* demand, if you have trouble articulating your value proposition and you like our style, here are the deliverables, cut us a check if you're keen.

"No one wants to buy a hammer, they want a nail in the wall to hang something on."

A hammer without a purpose just makes a mess.

If you can't articulate what you do as a solution to a very specific problem, your resources (time, energy, money) evaporate quickly.