One of the toughest things for me is coming up with a quote or hourly rate to charge clients. I want the job so I don’t want to charge too much but offering a price too low is just cheating myself and devaluing my work. Early on I took some really low paying jobs but thought I was making a pretty good hourly rate. I applied for other freelance jobs at the same rate and often times didn’t get the job. Slowly I’ve raised my hourly rate and been more careful when picking projects. My portfolio hasn’t changed (I’ll update it sooner or later) and yet I get more work at the higher rates then I did at the lower rates.
Clients may want a low price but they also know that they get what they pay for. If you pay a designer or developer a low rate you’re probably gonna get a low quality website.
But the real trick to finding good jobs isn’t learning what to charge your clients, it’s learning how to pick clients. The clients that understand how beneficial your work is to their company are the clients you want to get and they’re the clients you’re going to want to help the most. It’s a win-win.
Moral of the story: don’t cheat yourself even if it means you don’t get the job. And to those who are looking to have a website built, don’t always pick the lowest bidder. It may be cheap but it won’t be worth it.
Yeah… It kinda hard to set a optimum pricing. I work for 15$ an hour.
Posted by Thilak on Oct 25, 2006.
I think I ask way to little, I do most small things for free, although then people nomally decide to pay me a little 😛
Posted by Billytheradponi (Nick Barrett) on Oct 27, 2006.
Just charge a little more and see what happens. Make it an experiment.
Posted by Mattbob on Oct 27, 2006.
I tend to charge by the hour only for maintenance things. For websites I charge by the project.
Eg. 10 pages, blog, design, and contact form – $1800
Posted by Takumi on Oct 28, 2006.