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My first month freelancing

alanhollis.com

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Re: My first month freelancing

#81

Post by Alan01252 »

tptacek wrote: post #77
Alan01252 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My response is something like this. " I feel that my standard rate is justified due to my knowledge, the quality of the code I produce, my flexibility and my ability to learn and pick up new skills and technologies quickly. I have other clients who are paying my full daily rate and they very satisfied with the work I produce. I completely understand if this is non negotiable. And I realise asking for an increase on t…

"Hey, thanks for asking. Here's the deal: we work on a daily rate, because most of our projects demand our full attention for at least the majority of a day. In order to be fair to all our customers and to keep things manageable for us, we bill in one-day increments." I don't really see why I'd say more than that. If a client kept pushing after that, I'd start saying things like "I understand; let's figure out how we…

Thanks Thomas, really appreciate your feedback on this and the rest of the advice you've given in the comments too.

Re: My first month freelancing

#82

Post by c250d07 »

I know a few others doing freelance design work, and they're also pretty good. They are doing very well, but I think the market for freelance programmers is a different story right now.

Re: My first month freelancing

#83

Post by greyboy »

jere wrote: post #68

>There are a lot of failed companies with legacy code which now needs to be maintained. If they were failed companies, they wouldn't need you to manage legacy code.

What he's saying is that there are plenty of companies who have purchased software from companies that have since folded. Obviously, any support from that defunct company would then also be gone.

Re: My first month freelancing

#84

Post by poopooface »

tptacek wrote: post #56
ErrantX wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking large scale projects & clients here, though. For smaller scale work and titchy clients (a massive marketplace where some of the most successful consultants I know operate), "daily rate" just doesn't work (YMMV). Neither does fixed price, really. I spent a period charging daily and half day rates based on the advice of someone else - it was a pain for me more than anything. I spent more time asserting…

The industry standard project in my field is 2 people, 2 weeks. We do one-week projects, we do sub-week projects, and we do multi-month projects, but the modal project staffing is 4 person-weeks. These aren't huge projects. We work with as many startups as we do with large financial companies. I'm having a hard time understanding how a simple daily rate causes you more stress. Why were you discussing with your client…

How would you get started in this seller's market?

Re: My first month freelancing

#85

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

jakejake wrote: post #78
hu_me wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you professionally say no? This is one of the harder things for me when starting on a contract. I dont want to appear pushy and turn them away nor interested in going back to negotiating. Ps. I am from south asia so I also think there is a expectation of a need for haggling.

Basically I just tell them the truth - that the project doesn't seem to be a good fit for my business right now. If they insist on knowing why, you can tell them the risk vs profit factor is too high for you at this stage. If they want to know what that means, you can just say that you don't think you can give a good estimate of the total project time/cost so you don't feel comfortable bidding on it. If they're reaso…

Wish I had seen this post just an hour ago :-) I turned down a prospective client for that very reason. I said basically the same thing, but you phrased it better than I did.

Re: My first month freelancing

#86

Post by csomar »

ams6110 wrote: post #46
patio11 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted daily ("Work is on a time and materials basis. Rate: $2,000 per day."). Invoices will typically cover a few weeks of work, depending on the tempo of your engagements, your relationship with a customer, etc.

This has to be regionally dependent. Around here there is no way you would get $2,000 day for web development. Best I have ever gotten is half that, for a one-day "emergency" engagement (i.e. drop everything and help me).

Lots of WordPress (yes, WordPress) devs charge $250/hour. That's $2,000 (assuming no travel expenses). JavaScript/Ruby/Python, I don't see why $2K/day is actually not feasible.

Re: My first month freelancing

#87

Post by noahc »

tptacek wrote: post #7

People want to pay you hourly/per project, convince them it’s better for both you and them to pay you daily. I’ll explain why in a future post. I've burned many thousands of words here arguing the same point and will hopefully be able to spare you all a retread, so let me just say that I think a lot of good habits and useful dynamics emerge organically from this one decision. If you make no other careful strategic de…

How much of your advice do you think is applicable to freelancers who moonlight on occasion. Do you think anyone would go for a 'nights and weekends' ( 25 hours ) weekly rate?

Re: My first month freelancing

#88

Post by sequoia »

tptacek wrote: post #54
sequoia wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool! Lots of neat discussion there. I must say however, that "If I work an hour for you I can't work for anyone the rest of the day" argument is one I wouldn't want to pitch to a prospect. Seriously? If you work for 1 hour on project X you're done for the day? I know it's super inefficient to switch contexts and I agree about the "bill full day" assertion, but I wouldn't phrase it as "I can't ever do any context swi…

Who's "pitching" this to a prospect? You make it sound like something you'd put on your website and in your proposals. Your terms are your terms. A client asks, "I think we'd just like you for an hour or two today, so can we just pay for that", and you say "no, sorry".

You are correct. I guess I was just concerned that declaring that working on a project for any amount of time, no matter how small, precludes work on anything else for the rest of the day sounds a bit too inflexible, bordering on incompetent. Your comments indicate that you are not actually this inflexible with good clients, to the contrary you are generous with small amounts of time, so I'm not sure why you'd want to tell them you are 'unable' to work on more than one project per day ever; it seems like you're selling your abilities short. Basically I agree but I'd phrase it in terms of efficiency and ROI: the value delivered in X amount of time plummets when you have to context switch. Anyway thanks for the sound advice!

Re: My first month freelancing

#89

Post by dools »

tptacek wrote: post #7

People want to pay you hourly/per project, convince them it’s better for both you and them to pay you daily. I’ll explain why in a future post. I've burned many thousands of words here arguing the same point and will hopefully be able to spare you all a retread, so let me just say that I think a lot of good habits and useful dynamics emerge organically from this one decision. If you make no other careful strategic de…

I bill hourly for some clients, daily for others and fixed project basis for others. My hourly clients are some of my best.

If you don't have systems setup for tracking time without overhead and producing invoices on that basis it can be difficult but we do so it works really well.

I think your repeated flogging of this particular dead horse is mis-guided and mis-leading.

Re: My first month freelancing

#90

Post by ams6110 »

tptacek wrote: post #80
lotharbot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean that you should bill hourly if you can measure your work in hours. I mean that you should bill hourly if you want to run the sort of business where you work on six different clients' smallish tasks each day (say, simple web stuff with minimal ramping), like the setup ErrantX described elsewhere. As you say, this is based on value provided to the customer. If you're working with clients who are going to w…

Ok, but there are a bunch of reasons why I think you should actively avoid "markets best served by hourly work": * It positions you against the lowest-quality cheapest providers. * It misaligns your incentives, so that you're penalized for doing a better job. * It totally hides the cost of ramp-up and ramp-down (if you think clients push back on daily or project rates, wait until you charge them for 2 hours of "getti…

So why does a daily rate avoid this? It's just a larger unit of measure. It seems to me that you're really advocating charging for the value you provide, so you should quote a price for the project and leave any units of time out of it.
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