What Steve Jobs and Soggy Fries Reveal about Smart Freelance Pricing

I once got a spam text about a $9.99 logo, complete with a 100% satisfaction and money-back guarantee. Though I doubt that a $10 logo and “satisfaction” go hand in hand, the text proves an important point for freelancers.

Freelance services have no set prices. There are no hard and fast rules. You can pay $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, or far more for a logo.

$100,000 may sound like hyperbole until you learn about Steve Jobs and Paul Rand’s deal in 1986. After resigning from Apple the previous year, Steve Jobs needed a corporate identity for his new venture, NeXT, Inc. An employee gave Jobs books and articles by modernist designer Paul Rand who had created identities for some of the most iconic brands of his era, including Ford, UPS, ABC, IBM, and Westinghouse.

Jobs approached Rand about the project, and Rand named his price: $100,000 (or around $250,000 at today’s value).

Like copywriting, code, and strategy, identity design is worth what a client will pay. What a client will pay goes up based on perceived value. Perceived value goes up with perceived authority.

Jobs later commented on Rand’s approach in an interview: “I asked him (Paul Rand) if he would come up with a few options, and he said, ‘No, I will solve your…