charged someone $2K for something I thought was worth $200. they paid it immediately

we had a small B2B customer who kept asking if we could build them a custom integration

it would take maybe 40 hours to build. i quoted $200/month as an add-on to their existing plan, figuring that was fair hourly rate times the monthly maintenance

they didn't respond for two weeks. then they emailed back asking if we could do it as a one-time setup fee instead of recurring. so I thought okay, maybe $5K. that felt right. ten times the monthly cost. still reasonable

I almost sent that quote but instead asked them why this was important. why now. they explained that integrating our data into their internal system would save their team four hours a week. that's one person's time. at their salary level, four hours was worth about $200/week

so annually this was worth roughly $10K to them just in freed-up labor. suddenly my $5K quote felt like stealing

i quoted $2K. they said yes immediately. no negotiation. just "sounds great, let's do it." I realized in that moment i'd been underpricing custom work based on my own labor costs instead of pricing based on customer value

they were getting $10K in value. paying $2K was a steal for them. i was leaving $3K on the table by thinking like a contractor instead of like someone selling outcomes

did the same integration for two other customers that quarter. both paid $2K without pushback. one of them would have paid $3K if I'd quoted it. i don't know because I didn't ask

the lesson is so dumb it hurts. when someone asks for custom work, don't think about how long it'll take you. think about what it's worth to them. what would they pay if they did it themselves. what's the alternative. custom work is one of the few things where you can price based on value instead of time because the customer is usually desperate for that specific thing

now when someone asks for custom stuff, first question is always what problem does this solve and what would solving it be worth to you. answers those and suddenly you know if $2K is lowballing them or not