What is your baseline, and how did you establish it?

KonFusion

Hey folks,

Inspired by a blog post on how much a website costs my colleague (@Paddy) wrote, it got me curious.

To save you reading it (not to say that you shouldn't), at one point, going with a car analogy, he says:

...If you walk into a Mercedes dealership with €1,000 cash and smugly slam it on the table, there’s no possibility, unless someone is very sympathetic to your cause, that you will drive back out. The budget is below the baseline.

It also got me thinking on companies like Paravel, or Happy Cog, who mention that the work starts at 100,000. So that's their baseline.

So my question(s) to you fine folks is:

What is your baseline? (ie. What is the minimum amount you'll open up your text editor/creative suite for.) €1000, €2000? €10,000? €100,000? etc

And how did you establish your baseline?

While "Well it's what everyone else is charging" or "it's the going rate" are perfectly acceptable answers, I'm looking for some with a bit more substance.

Once established, how do you convey your worth? (over the likes of squarespace, elance etc).

I know people get some client work from this forum, so may be loath to share such information (though I'm not all to sure why?). But sure, just do it anyway :pac:

For the sake of discussion, we'll assume the client is just joe bloggs, as opposed to something you'd want for your portfolio and do for any money.

If you vote in the poll, please also leave a comment. I'm more interested in the latter questions than the former.