Pricing your freelance services can be a difficult task, even for experienced and professional freelancers. When setting your rate, you should first consider whether or not you want to set your rate on a per project basis or hourly. This article will focus on setting your hourly rate as a freelancer.

As a freelancer, you should adjust your hourly rate depending upon the client and the particular task. Some things to consider when adjusting your hourly rate per project are:

1. Any investment costs for the project?

All investment for each project should be calculated into your hourly rate. If you are required to travel, consider gas prices. If you have to use any other tools such as printing costs, computer costs, software costs, etc.

2. The amount of projects you are currently involved with. What is your time worth as you prioritize all of your freelance assignments?

If you are currently working on multiple high paying projects, the time you spend away from these projects and the amount of time you will have to spend that exceeds your preferred working schedule should be considered.

3. New client or long term client?

It is beneficial to offer discounts and lower rates to clients that you have a long term relationship with and are known to pay on time, are easy to work with, etc. You are ultimately saving off the clock hours on understanding your client, exchanging contact information and possible reworks of projects and/or assignments.

Your hourly rate should also be dependent upon the level of difficulty for each project. Setting similar hourly rates for an E-Commerce site development and a simple gallery website design isn't the proper way to set hourly rates. Consider yourself a renaissance employee, taking on multiple roles in the job place. Your computer programmer is going to earn a fair amount more than the desk top publisher. Set your price for each work hat you have to put on within each project.

Finally, research your competition and compare different prices of your competitors that have similar experience, exposure, time lines and experience that you have as a freelancer. Set your price accordingly.

Consider your salary goal per year.

If your goal is to make $45,000.00 a year as a freelance web designer, because you could make a similar salary working within an office environment, you should set your project prices to adjust to this number. Estimate the amount of hours per week you intend to work, taking into consideration business development hours (which should count against your hourly rate) and other miscellaneous hours spent developing your business. Divide your salary by the amount of hours you want to work.

Consider overhead costs

If you have costs associated with your business, including computes, software, office, etc. You should deduct these costs against your desired yearly salary.

I hope this helps are you freelancers to determine an appropriate hourly rate. Don't underestimate your services, as a freelancer, your personal business model and prices are also your direct livelihood!

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Comments (1)

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written by stephen clover, March 29, 2007

I liked your article. I would like to know how how so much a word, say 10cents would stack up against the hourly rate.
regards
maxwell

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