181–190 of 242 posts
The best advice I ever got about freelancing was to increase my rate for every job and keep on doing that until people refused to hire me. How else can you figure out what you're worth?
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Would that not end up hurting your reputation after a while?
Would you want a 10.000USD or the 30.000USD surgery? There is a paradoxon that people associate costs with quality. High rates never hurt anyone, given that they actually deliver on it.
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> … [A] market pay rate/invoicing data product…sell it to the people who need it most -- freelancers and consultants. > Selling to companies on the other side of this equation is also obvious… So basically an invoicing product that provides hourly rate suggestions based on collected data? Surely this must exist already.
You’d think so. I don’t Think you should bother building invoicing though. That’s not the point, price discovery is the only point. You could just sell the dataset directly IMO, quarterly data is what people care about, and there’s a reason to buy every single year
It used to be $225/hr. But I don’t have an hourly rate anymore and I basically never will. You need to understand that as a contractor clients value more than just your time and the work you do. They value flexibility in staffing, getting an outsider’s opinion, their own time, working with a true expert, and making progress on projects which they can show off to their boss. That’s why for all my work I scope project…
Right now I charge $1,000/day. I do precisely 8 hours. Zero travel. No out of normal work hours. No weekends. No unreasonable demands. No arseholes. No toxicity. No guilting me into delivering something. No awkward conversations about "well why isn't X done yet?" No high stress. No "we must deliver this by Tuesday at all costs." No "we need you to go hard on this problem." No "we need you to come in to the office for this."
I tend to work with young start-ups who have interesting problems to solve. The downside is that this frequently involves working with first-time founders who lack boundaries or start-ups who think because they paid "for a day" that a "day" involves 20 hours of work. I'm getting better about stating that "I start at 9AM local time and stop at 6PM local time."
I could get more if I worked for BigCorp, or even a regular job quite possibly, but this way I get to pick and choose what I work on, and when I want to work. If I want to shift my days or hours around to take an afternoon off, I do, and I don't have to explain myself to anyone.
Depends on the customer. The largest rate I used to take was $500/hour (for a 10 hours project, so it haven’t made me a millionaire). The smallest is of course free, but the actual commercial smallest was probably $80/hour (for a long-term project). (I live in Switzerland, which is quite expensive). It goes without saying that there are times when I don’t have any projects in the pipeline, so I have to spend some tim…
I am bit confused on how to establish a solid rate as it seems I had zero negotiation options. Thanks for your advice.
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Oh, to be able to charge by the hour would be such bliss as a lawyer. We charge by 0,1 hours: every 6 minutes need to be accounted for.
I love getting charged $75 for emails that just say “OK”
“OK”
THE CONTENT OF THIS EMAIL IS CONFIDENTIAL AND INTENDED FOR THE RECIPIENT SPECIFIED IN MESSAGE ONLY. IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN…
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My uncle who's a mechanic, bills 35/40€/h and it's not expensive. If you go to any retail mechanic the rate won't be lower than 70€/h.
So does my mechanic, but he does a harder job and has 100k€ in tools. Also, a mechanic can only charge when he has customers, where I can do 8hrs/day for a single customer for ages. That being said, I know the rate is low comparatively for the wider market, but it's still high locally.
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> Would you want a 10.000USD or the 30.000USD surgery? I'd like to have the 0USD surgery, but maybe that's just my inner European.
We don’t have a VAT tax. Free just means you pay with other peoples money while they pay with yours.