41–50 of 146 posts
Hourly billing burnt me out. I started on Upwork with the spying software installed. I was desperate for money at that time. But my own methodology when working is to think about the problem, only typing code when I have a good hint about a solution. So for a day of work, I may spend one hour typing code, three hours reading code and the rest of the time thinking hard. But the activity monitor inside the software onl…
In a single day, you should target 5/6 hours of billable work. The extra 2-3 hours are for lunch, and other management type work you need to do to keep your freelance business afloat.
Btw, not to be a broken record, but you should try charging either by the day or by the project. It's just more security and takes the pressure off of needing to justify every individual hour spent.
Another tidbit of advice: use https://contractrates.fyi to figure out what you should be charging by the hour. A solid chance that you are undercharging.
Would I be able to do more tasks during the day if I only spent 30 minutes on typing? No. I tried and it is too taxing and leads to burn out. When I was younger I would literally be whizzing through tasks, but by the end of the day, I wouldn't even be able to speak properly. Completely brain dead. It sent me through severe depression and eventually I had to quit the job I had then for my sanity.
Basically if I have a task to do, I bill for it for each working hour (typically 7.5) until it's done.
I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted it. They think in hours (or days) not some subdivision of them. And yes, thinking about work is the same as doing the work. It's all billable time. As far as your rate, I always bill as high as I can without pushback. Where is that level? Yo…
> In the end it's just business. You either make a client happy or you don't. Spot on. 1) Do good work. Be patient and kind to clients. Remember when someone asks you to do something for the 8th time, "Hey, it's their money." 2) Make sure you write your contracts in a way that lets you raise rates every January. Aim for a 10% increase every calendar year. 3) Give clients a discount if they sign retainers, or longer c…
A lawyer died and arrived at the pearly gates. To his dismay, there were thousands of people ahead of him in line to see St. Peter. To his surprise, St. Peter left his desk at the gate and came down the long line to where the laywer was, and greeted him warmly. Then St. Peter and one of his assistants took the lawyer by the hands and guided him up to the front of the line, and into a comfortable chair by his desk. Th…
I wouldn’t lower your rate… That doesn’t really affect the ethics of billing, or contractual obligations or anything. If the client is unhappy with what you’re doing it’s not going to matter whether you’re paid more or less, and vice-versa (if they’re happy with how you work either way doesn’t matter).
Usually clients are happier to have that because they know the cost up front, and I am happier because I don't have to track hours.
The most important part of billing by project is that requirements are rock solid before you start (and the hours you spend on that should be rolled up into the total project cost after you make the requirements). And make sure your contract specifies what happens when there is scope creep (new contract? daily rate for changes?).
And lastly make sure your contract has milestone payments if it's a long contract. You don't want to work for four months and then have to wait to get paid or argue about completion. Have a milestone that might hit every month or so and get 20% of the payment, so there is a larger bulk payment at the end for completion but also some payments on the way.
I moved to billimg by the day to avoid this, it has felt like a good compromise between people wanting granular controls and me not wanting to go insane tracking every second.
"""
Charging Weekly: It Makes Everything Automatically Better
What's the difference between $100 an hour and $4,000 a week? Aren't they mathematically equivalent? No. Weekly billing strictly dominates hourly billing.
- Weekly billing means you never waste time itemizing minute by minute invoices ("37 minutes: call with Bob about the new login page").
- Weekly billing means you have uninterrupted schedulable consulting availability in weekly blocks, and non-billable overhead like prospecting or contract negotiations happens between the blocks (when you weren't billable anyhow) rather than during the workday (when, as an hourly freelancer, you are in principle supposed to be billing).
- Weekly billing makes it easy to align units of work to quantifiable business goals, where those goals dwarf the rate charged.
Weekly billing also does wonderful things for pricing negotiations... because you'll stop having them. When I write a proposal for an engagement, I typically write a list of things we can do and my estimate for how many will fit into 1, 2, or 3 weeks. If clients don't have 3 weeks in the budget, we can compromise on scope rather than compromising on my rate.
If you quote hourly rates rather than weekly rates, that encourages clients to see you as expensive and encourages them to take a whack at your hourly just to see if it sticks. Think of anything priced per hour. $100 an hour is more than that costs, right? So $100 per hour, even though it is not a market rate for e.g. intermediate Ruby on Rails programmers, suddenly sounds expensive. Your decision-maker at the client probably does not make $100 an hour, and they know that. So they might say "Well, the economy is not great right now, we really can't do more than $90." That isn't objectively true, the negotiator just wants to get a $10 win... and yet it costs you 10% of your income.
When you're charging weekly rates, the conversation goes something more like this: "So you don't have $12,000 in the budget for 3 weeks? OK. What is the budget? $10,000? Alright, what do you want us to cut?" You can then give the negotiator something to hang his cost-cutting hat on while still preserving your ability to charge your full rate in this engagement and all future engagements. (Word to the wise: no client, anywhere, likes giving up discounts after they've been given them. I have ridiculously successful client relationships where I, stupidly, cut them a discount years ago and I'm still paying for that decision.)
"""
1. https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
A lawyer died and arrived at the pearly gates. To his dismay, there were thousands of people ahead of him in line to see St. Peter. To his surprise, St. Peter left his desk at the gate and came down the long line to where the laywer was, and greeted him warmly. Then St. Peter and one of his assistants took the lawyer by the hands and guided him up to the front of the line, and into a comfortable chair by his desk. Th…
Avery taught Mitch all about billing clients for his time. As an associate he could bill $100 an hour. His future progress at the firm, he was warned, depended on how much income he made for the firm. He learned that it was acceptable to bill clients more than he actually worked. 'If you think about a client while you're driving over to the office in the morning,' Avery told him, 'add on another hour.' He could bill clients for twelve hours a day, even if he never worked twelve hours a day. Mitch also learned that Avery liked to bend the firm's rules.