With the talk recently about doing things for free I saw a perspective today that talked about how a person was saying if you want to be known as a professional of sort in your field that you must start charging people money for it. For example, if you want to be a professional photographer it doesn’t matter how good your pictures are or how many places it got published with great reviews. You need to charge people money so that you are classified as a professional to compete with others in the industry.
That’s kind of an interesting thought. In one end I guess it is true where if you are offering a professional service with great value putting a price on it will further emphasize that as like social proof. On the other hand if you are just talking about professional quality of work that is a little different. For example, like with pictures I could easily see a hobbyist taking better photos than a professional per se. One person charging money doesn’t automatically make the end product better.
But charging money is a perception factor to think about. I guarantee if you go to a page where someone says they charge $200 an hr and the other person says $50 that most people will think the $200 guy must be way better. Although I do remember a situation where this backfired where I was talking to a person that charged so much even though there wasn’t really anything to show that demonstrates why their service was worth that much. Like there if you are charging a ton of money there better be an actual reason as oppose to using it simply for perception.
Although, nowadays in many cases I don’t know if you necessarily need to charge people money as opposed to finding ways to make money to be called a professional per se in whatever field it may be that you work in.