How Much Are You Worth?

By: Kyle Lacy on June 17th, 2010 at 5:30 am

http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/how-much-are-you-worth/

How do you rate the your value on the marketplace? How do you figure out how much you are actually worth? How much should you charge a potential client?

Let’s say you determine this through how much and how you are paid. Is that hourly? Salary? Project to project? I read a blog by Seth Godin where he shared a story about a college professor who saved a potentially multi-million dollar project with one simple solution.They paid him $45,000 because if he succeeded they would save millions. The solution was a trip to a hardware store to buy a chemical that would fix the problem. Small solution but big problem without the professor’s knowledge.

Your price tag

Because of this brilliant post, I started thinking about where my value is centered as an individual, as a professional – where does my value lie? Can you actually put a price on someone? Do you have enough “sass” to value yourself above everyone else?

This subject matter leans heavily on whether or not you produce results for the people who pay you. Are you creating quality work for the money? Do you value yourself on the quality or work and what the marketplace is willing to pay? Do you take in the intangibles of branding and personal marketing?

Consider how much we pay doctors. Now, I’m not saying they aren’t valuable. In fact, they are essential. But consider it. If you have a common cold and decide to see the doctor – the doctor then says go home, sleep, drink lots of fluids you’ll be fine in a couple of days – what did you (or your insurance) pay them for? You paid him/her for something only they could tell you with full confidence. So now you know all you had was the common cold, and nothing else.

What  I’m ultimately saying is that we are valued on the work we produce, as well as the assumption of the marketplace. If you are assumed valuable, it does help your bottom line as a professional.

Author:

Kyle Lacy writes a regular blog at KyleLacy.com and is founder and CEO of Brandswag, a social media strategy and training company. His blog has been featured on Wall Street Journal’s website and Read Write Web’s daily blog journal. Recently, Kyle was voted as one of the top 150 social media blogs in the world (on two websites), and produces regular keynote speeches across the Midwest. He also just finished writing Twitter Marketing for Dummies by Wiley Publishing.