Freelancing: How do you specify your hourly rate for *new* clients? For freelancers...
Do you specify your hourly rate upon being asked (early on in process), or do you say you set a fixed budget (based on a proposal) for new clients? I've read that specifying the hourly rate upfront can weed out deadbeats, and/or clients you don't want to work with, is this true? Overall how do you, as freelancers, work through this process? Thanks! |
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4101355#up_4103417
Do price high; weeding out deadbeats is just one of the wins for doing that.
Without knowing anything else about how you work, my recommendation is to select only those clients for whom doing the work of a proposal on spec is worth it, and then: write proposals for them.
You can write a proposal with a single total project number in it without committing to deliver that project in exactly X billable days, for what it's worth.
That being said, if it's an especially small job, I'll sometimes take it on a per hour basis to keep things simple.
Plus, you may have to deal with client asking trivial changes which I specially find hard to refuse. Is there a model where you can charge more if it exceeds your expected time of completion?
Else, I quote my hourly (150) and then say "this one thing looks like 12 hours". I get the money, then get started.