# Why more work can leave you with less money [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-13 updated: 2026-10-13 language: en reading time: 4 min topic: Marketing & sales source booklet: [What to Charge](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/pricing-exchange) When some jobs sell for less than they cost to deliver, every extra job of that kind deepens the hole, so a business can grow and still keep less money. Some businesses grow, get busier than ever, and keep less money than before. According to the source, this happens when part of the work sells below the floor, meaning for less than it costs to deliver, and each job of that kind digs the hole deeper. ## The test a product has to pass The source sets one test with two conditions. The product has to be sellable at all, and the price has to come out above what it costs you to deliver. According to the booklet, a product that cannot be sold above its delivery cost is a hobby, and you are the one funding it. The answer depends on whether the price clears the cost of delivery, and the amount of work has no part in it. The floor here is the cost of delivery, everything it takes to get the work to the customer. Below that line, each job takes money out of the business. That explains a familiar sight: the business grows, there is more work, and there is less money. Suppose a contractor whose work falls into three kinds. Two make money, one loses it, and the one that loses it fills 40% of his schedule. Or a studio owner with a cheap starter package, designed to attract clients. It attracted them, and each one cost her more than they paid. And the other way: the same owner, after she scrapped the package. She had fewer enquiries and the same profit in half the hours. ## The first failure: selling at no profit The booklet describes two opposite failures around the floor, and both look like a solution at first. The source shows the first with a parable about a shoe store: “We sell shoes at no profit to raise the stat, we make no money.” Read that way, it sounds obvious. Yet it describes exactly a business that watches the number of customers and ignores profit, counts projects and ignores what is left of them, or tracks how much work it has and ignores how much of it stays. The booklet draws a plain rule from this. A number you can raise by cutting your price is a number you should not chase. Suppose an owner who counts enquiries. He could double them by tomorrow morning with a big discount, and he would earn less. The number he tracks says things are improving while his accounts say the opposite. Or a contractor proud of a full calendar. Four days out of ten went to jobs that did not cover their own cost. And the other way: the same contractor, after he began marking each day by what he earned as well as by whether it was full. Two kinds of job came off his menu entirely. ## The opposite failure: charging more than you delivered Right after that, the source gives the other side, and it is just as dangerous. This time the store tries only to make money. It sells cheap shoes at a high price, its customers do not come back, and it does not make money either. Two opposite directions reach the same result. The explanation sits at the end of the sentence: **the customers do not come back.** An inflated price works once. According to the booklet, what decides it is whether the customer returned to you. That is also a practical test for a price. When people pay and do not return, the price was too high for what they received. It is measured by what they felt they bought. Suppose an owner who raised prices by 40% without changing anything he delivers. Revenue rose for one quarter and fell for four. Or a supplier who asks a premium price and keeps premium delivery times, which means late. The only premium thing about him is the wait, and his customers pay once. And the other way: a designer who raised her price and also cut her delivery time by a third. Same clients, and not one complaint. ## What the booklet adds This chapter of the booklet includes two exercises: a floor exercise and a return exercise. From there it moves to the ceiling of a price, and to why a price does not have to relate to cost at all. A customer who comes back proves a price right more than the payment does. A broken floor stays hidden in a full calendar until the end of the year, when you find that you worked a lot and kept little. The booklet is general knowledge, not financial advice for your business. - [What to Charge](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/pricing-exchange): A method for pricing instead of copying, and one test that tells you whether the price was right: not on the day they paid, but on the day they came back. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/the-price-floor-test) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/the-price-floor-test)