Ask HN: Do you (freelancers) charge for emails?

It depends on how long the answer is. If it's more than a sentence or two, I'll reply with "I'll write you a brief report on that by day after tomorrow." and that work will be listed on my next invoice. If it's a fixed bid, I'll estimate time for the work and submit a change to the bid. The key is to explicitly notify the client that it will take billable time if in fact it will.

If a client is peppering you with short questions, collect them into a single response. Sometimes you may have to set expectations about what you'll charge for and what falls below that threshold.

I very much like the "pin" feature of Inbox, and I use it to keep hot issues within easy reach and to make it visible to me when they pile up. As others have pointed out, next-day response is not rude, Set expectations about that, too, if you have to.

IANAL. I don't charge for emails, they do, telephone calls too, by the minute.

Surely it depends on the contractual agreements you enter. If you have to provide timely support, define timely. If they can't accept a price for a timely response they're children.

> You are working for client A and then suddenly an email comes from client B, which totally wastes time due to context switching etc

Don't get so vexed. Your time is yours. It is defined in the contract with the client. If they make an unusual request then cool, but 'maker time' is pretty pointless if you get drawn to distractions without your own 'manager time' planning ahead on how to avoid it.

Yes. I include a reasonable amount of context switching time. Also, say I am trying to sleep and I am thinking about a client's problem; I will include that time too, but only if significant. I prorate the time if it is only partially productive.

As for having two clients at once, if the time spent on both clients and their emails is about the same, then there is no need to stop the timer for small emails. It all sort of blends together. Overmanagement of time is a waste of time.

Overall, the way I see it is that time working for a client needs to be counted, but it is not that important to distinguish how much time is spent on each specific task. The bottom line is what matters.

Good customer service is meeting or exceeding expectations. That means it starts with setting expectations, and most consultants would do well to clarify that being responsive is standard, being on-call is not. A client should never be left with the impression that email is the best channel for urgent-and-important-low-latency communications. If it requires immediate response, pick up the phone...and text.

The fixed price versus time and materials evaluation is orthogonal. The question could just as easily have been about how fast to respond to emails on a fixed price contract...at the root, it's a screw not a nail.

'Nickle and diming' is a synonym for consulting. Charging for an email is just part and parcel of communicating the value of one's time under a time and materials contract.

Your experience is your experience. I don't doubt that what you have found works, works for you. Markets vary geographically, by industry, and by capital structure. Clients vary in expectations. Contractors vary in temperament. Projects vary in firmness and in scope. The only universal is that everyone should double their rates.

I did my first freelance gig in 1990. It involved Leroying. I've used fixed price. I've been billed out hourly to buy a job by a big firm that always did fixed price. I've chunked my time in half days. I've chunked it by the hour. I've eaten phone calls and charged for them. I've had clients who have more money than you or I will ever see and waitresses...and waitresses are great clients because they pay in cash and always have some in their pocket at every meeting. I've handed off a roll of drawings for $18,000 in cash from a safe placed in my other hand in the back of bar, drug deal style.

Some clients want high maintenance. Some are respectful of the fact that my time is money. Some are even charities and get some services for free. Businesses aren't charities.

All of which is to say is that reasons I wouldn't bill for phone calls or whatever were:

  1. I was afraid of pissing clients off.
  2. I didn't want to be that disciplined.

One day I realized that clients who get pissed off paying for my time aren't going to care what or how I bill. They simply don't want to pay and clients that don't want to pay aren't worth having because...well, they tend not to pay. So billing hourly and nickling and diming and requiring a healthy retainer against final invoice [along with the aforementioned higher rate] turns out to be a useful tool for screening clients. And providing a rate at the initial conversation is a useful screen for random leads.

So yeah, I'll bill 15 minutes for an email. It takes me at least that long to do it right. Charging aligns my interests (getting paid) with those of my clients (my doing the things they hired me to do right and not cutting corners). If it's not worth billing for then doing it isn't probably very important.

It is worth noting that I typically have a single point of contact. It's part of the industry landscape. Yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine from Jr. High. He's a chemist and the primary stay at home parent and does consulting on the side. In his industry royalties are money on the table: I learn something new every day.