Quick! Your client prospect just asked what your rate is. What do you do? You know your rate (or you should by now). That’s not the problem. There are actually two problems here — First, you probably shouldn’t be telling them your rate in that initial conversation (Jennifer Gregory has a great post by Elizabeth…
Tag: pricing freelance work
Why Your Hourly Freelance Rate May Be the Wrong Approach
I don’t charge hourly anymore. Let me be more specific: I don’t quote an hourly rate anymore. I don’t really need to. Neither do you. Here’s what I do instead: I quote a per-project rate, or a per-month retainer. Why is that important? Because sometimes the job you’re doing is much, much more than the…
Free Advice Friday: The Freelance (Under)Sell
What I’m listening to: Caledonia by Dougie MacLean It’s a Robert Burns kind of weekend — time for poems written by the bard, whisky tasting, and haggis. (Take my advice — skip the haggis.) Hence the link to the song by Dougie MacLean, who was homesick for his native “Caledonia” when he wrote what has…
Why Freelance Pricing Guides Aren’t Helping You
What I’m listening to: Wrong by The Airborne Toxic Event We’ve all done it. We’ve asked the question: “How much should I charge for …?” While there’s nothing inherently wrong with asking other writers “How much do you charge for…?”, by asking how much we should be charging, we are, once again, putting control of our businesses…
Writers, Budgets, and Samples
What I’m reading: The Racketeer by John Grisham What’s on the iPod: A View that Almost Kills by We Invented Paris I was talking with a writer friend last week about work. Things are going well for both of us at the moment, but we’re used to the tenuous nature of the job. What takes…
Writers Worth: A Dirty Little Secret About Pricing
Today’s enlightening guest post comes from Walt Kania, a freelance marketing writer who discovered an eye-opening secret about setting your price. Pricing is mostly in your head. Treat it that way. By Walt Kania I used to think that our fees as writers were pre-ordained by all sorts of fancy economic and accounting factors, like…
The Price and the Client
What’s on the iPod: Beautiful Day by U2 Another busy one yesterday, and I’m expecting it to repeat today. I did manage to move one of the interviews to email, which frees up a lot of time and helps both the interviewee and me get the story straight the first time. Also, I kept chasing…
How To Sabotage Your Image
What’s on the iPod: Numb by The Airborne Toxic Event A busy day yesterday, but I finished drafts of both the white paper and release. Now on to revisions on a previous project before continuing on with yet another project. Things aren’t so quiet around here as I thought they’d be this week. And yes,…
What’s Your Price?
It’s been a good week. Coming off a really rough re-entry (lots of work the two days after I got back), I was able to step back this week, rearrange the schedule, and buy myself a little wiggle room to readjust. I begged off the project offer I mentioned yesterday. Yes, I could have taken…
How Low Do You Go?
At this writing, I’m sitting at my new desk. It’s a solid oak mission-style desk with a keyboard drawer and no other storage. And yes, that’s exactly the way I want it. I’m a hoarder of sorts – not to the level of being on a reality cable show, but I save books, papers, notes…