Fantastic, actually! Yes. I didn’t even mind being called names. That was just confirmation that it was the right decision.

I bet it felt GREAT to jump off that merry-go-round!

See, that’s why I hate quoting hourly, Paula. It’s difficult for a client to understand how much time it takes for projects, nor should they really be able to understand it.

I had one project blow up as a result of unrealistic expectations. I was “allotted” two hours to conduct three interviews and rewrite a story (the client had made an error which caused the rewrite). When I explained it simply couldn’t be done, the client said just to do my best.

Oh, but when it turned out as badly as I warned it would, I was unprofessional. Why? Because I wasn’t willing to volunteer three more hours of my time to fix the client’s mistake. If it had been a client who hadn’t already left me waiting on several conference calls, had to be pushed to pay, and kept changing the focus, I might have helped one time. But this wasn’t the first time — it was a pattern. And I was jumping off the merry-go-round.

For instance, the article I’ll spend about an hour writing this afternoon is really straight-forward. One interview (less than 15-minutes), a little transcribing, and an hour’s worth of writing. Broken down by the per-word rate it’s far lower than some of my other clients pay, but if I break it down by time the hourly rate might even be higher for this piece that didn’t take much legwork at all. The editor set a flat fee based on their per-word rate, so no worrying about whether they mean the number of words assigned, the number of words delivered, or the number of words published.

I prefer per-project pricing because both sides go in knowing how much it will cost/pay.

I’ve had two different clients (both now ex-clients) who claimed to pay decent hourly rates, when in reality they decided how much work you SHOULD be able to complete in an hour. And of course, their expectations were unreasonable. I’d rather take my time to do my work well than rush something through and miss errors. (Those errors probably make the editors feel more important that when someone turns in clean copy.)

When someone is paying by the hour, they might not trust that you’ve actually put in the time you say you have. That leads to micromanaging. (Like an ex-editor who questioned how hard I was working because they “saw me” on Twitter. Yeah. I retweeted a couple things during my lunch break. Time I wasn’t being paid for. And since I was a freelancer and not an employee, it was none of their business.)

Amen on that last point in particular. Separating the wheat from the chaff. 😉

Again, where I live, the local potential clients, the minute you cite “project” rather than “hourly”, they melt down. Because to them, hourly means “minimum wage” or however far they can get you down.

So then I quote a higher hourly and show them how it’s better to use the project quote.

I’d already started building in materials and equipment costs into the project quotes (travel, phone time, etc. are always part of it, when relevant). So I’m not hit as badly by the changes in the tax code as I would have been otherwise.

I’m getting better at figuring general overhead, too, the way any business would.

The good part about knowing how you’re going to price is that it helps sort actual clients from those who are just trying to get the lowest price and don’t really care about quality.