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18 Months of Pricing AI Automations in 21 Mins

Nate Herk | AI Automation

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My playbook for growing a $1M AI agency: https://app.aiautomationsociety.ai/op...
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I've sold over a hundred AI automation systems and I've priced plenty of them wrong.

In this video I walk through one real build I sold, every number in it, and show you how to turn a client's own numbers into a price you can actually defend.

I also cover why hourly billing works against you, how to structure milestones so you get paid every 30 days, and who should be paying for API costs.

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📧 nate@smoothmedia.co

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LinkedIn: nateherkelman
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:55 A Real Build, Every Number
3:01 Maintenance Retainers & Proving Value
5:08 Why Hourly Billing Fails
6:33 Grab My FREE Pricing Doc
6:54 Cost, Value & Price
7:58 The Discovery Call
10:35 Sizing the Value & Setting Your Price
13:46 Hours Saved vs Bottom-Line Impact
15:08 Milestones & Getting Paid
17:29 Pushback & Who Pays for API Costs
20:30 Final Thoughts

20 Comments

@nateherk Creator 2 months ago Pinned

FREE MONTH voice to text: https://get.glaido.com/nate
My FREE resources: https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society/about?el=ai-pricing-masterclass&hcategory=youtube-videos&utm_campaign=free-group

@kestonglasgow6978 2 months ago

Appreciate you Nate. I’m almost at 200k since the year started from building my own app and selling automations. I must say you’re 1 of 3 creators I learn from. 🙏🏾🙏🏾

@Ani-Bjorkstrom 2 months ago

The “hours saved vs bottom-line impact” distinction is especially important for AI automation pricing. In finance, I’d want every proposal to separate build cost, recurring run cost, exception-handling cost, and the actual value driver being improved. That makes the discussion much easier to defend internally than a generic hourly estimate.

@PsyStrider 2 months ago (edited)

Thanks for the fast uploads keep it up Nate! Always providing us value😎

@pedrochaparro 2 months ago

This content is real gold, thankssss

@ArchivoChaldea 2 months ago

This video is puuuuuuure GOLD.

@shiph59 2 months ago

Couldn't have come at a better time. Thank you, Nate. When it comes to.pricing, your channel has been most helpful

@jonathanpark873 2 months ago

Nate, cover us your codex project and ways of doing if different or how u use them together with claude code

@JeffreyEntrepreneur 2 months ago

Another great video Nate! Thanks so much for the insight from your own experience. Definitely saving that doc for reference and the video.

@emal8323 2 months ago

Nice one Nate bro!!

@Amit.Tabibi 2 months ago

thank you so much for this

@aidenhiew7277 2 months ago

Great stuff

@FRELAN-AI 2 months ago

Always gold! Thanks for the share Nate. Really helpful. Its for all. Even for non coder and vibe.

@magneticfounders 2 months ago

The pricing mistake I made longest was quoting off how hard the build was for me. Clients never feel my hours, they feel the problem that stops happening. The same automation felt cheap when I called it "a workflow" and worth a retainer when I framed it as "you never touch this task again." Nothing changed but the outcome I put the price next to.

@vaebhav07 2 months ago

The measurement point at the end is underrated. I think the agencies that win over the next few years won't just build automations—they'll build systems that continuously prove business outcomes after deployment.

@AISenseCheck 2 months ago

AI automation is often priced by how many human hours it replaces. But that leaves out the harder question: who carries the risk when the automation makes a costly mistake? The true price should include not only value created, but accountability, oversight, maintenance, and the consequences of failure.

@pg17333 2 months ago

Ty Nate! ❤Can you do a vid of your take on Buzz?

@EldonConceicao 2 months ago

Great stuff. Most of the time, I present clients with a few different packages, each with its own set of features. And as you mentioned, they usually end up choosing the middle option.