Short story gig pricing? (The laments of an overwriter)

[somaginer1996]

Long post ahead, brace yourselves.

Now that I’m going back to school and am probably going to have to slow down work on Fiverr, I’ve decided to play around with the pricing structures on my gigs a little. At the moment, I’m considering changing pricing on my short story gigs. This doesn’t mean just upping the price, but also changing how I structure my gig packages.

Originally my basic package was 600 words for $5. But over time I’ve come to realize that because of how I write, it’s proving very difficult for me to keep my word count down to that level. I consider myself pretty lean prose-wise, but because I’m a fan of packing in a twist at the end, I tend to overwrite. Because I was starting out and didn’t have the heart to demand more payment for clients who asked for a 600-word short story, I’ve ended up delivering 1200-word stories for just $5. The clients seemed happy with that, but obviously I want to be compensated for the actual work I end up doing.

So my question is this: would it be a good idea to get rid of the 600-word short story package entirely, and just go from 1000 words or so as the basic package (most likely for $10)? I still don’t have a ton of reviews and I don’t want to be affected too adversely by having my base price at $10 instead of $5. But at the same time, school starting back up means I have less time to work on Fiverr anyways, so slight reduction in orders might actually prove beneficial for me. Any suggestions?

TL;DR: Chaging $5 for 600 words doesn’t work for me because I have a hard time keeping my short stories within that limit, considering upping basic package to $10 for 1000 words so I don’t end up just adding words for free. Suggestions?

Thanks in advance! (And apologies in advance to mods if this is in the wrong section!)

[miiila]

There are pros and cons but since you have to focus on school now for a while anyway, maybe that´s the ideal time to just do it and see what happens, you can always ‘switch back’ to your current pricing/package structure in case you´ll find it won´t go as you hope.
And you can always set the number of allowed orders in queue so low you won´t find yourself with more than you can handle.

[somaginer1996]

There are pros and cons but since you have to focus on school now for a while anyway, maybe that´s the ideal time to just do it and see what happens, you can always ‘switch back’ to your current pricing/package structure in case you´ll find it won´t go as you hope.

And you can always set the number of allowed orders in queue so low you won´t find yourself with more than you can handle.

Yep, I’ve already limited the orders in queue so I won’t be overwhelmed. I kind of wish that there were a function that allowed us to set overall order limits rather than limits that only apply to a single gig, but take what you can get, I guess. Unfortunately I only did this last night, so currently I have a bunch of orders in queue already that I’m going to have to deal with in the next few days. Ahh, how shortsighted I was not to do this earlier 😂

i suppose I’m just paranoid that having $10 starting prices will scare some people off, but you’re right that it’s an ideal time to experiment with pricing. School comes first, after all!

[lloydsolutions]

School has got to come first … and I just smiled at the word “laments”. 🙂

[somaginer1996]

School has got to come first … and I just smiled at the word “laments”. 🙂

Yeah, I always like to have a little fun with my titles. It is kind of weird to complain about your own tendencies to write too much. Hopefully I don’t come off as too annoying 😛

[expertpeople]

I believe that will be a good idea
May be you know that

Changing price will change your position in search,
This happens to me few times

So bear in mind

[somaginer1996]

Yeah, that was exactly my point in the post. I know for sure it’ll affect my sales, but since school is starting up again maybe I don’t need that much on my plate at once.

Also, don’t take this in the wrong way, but you don’t really have to comment on every post in the forum. When you are commenting, I think it would be helpful to be more constructive in terms of content.