have a question for freelancers, important as hell.

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megashape

megashape.net
Mar 16, 2009
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Canada, QC, Montreal
www.megashape.net
nah it's not important as hell but I really should have known that before,
I'm working as a freelancer webdesigner, been charging per whole work,
I mean , if one needs a simple static website, that'd include PSd file, Xhtml+CSS files and maybe simple JS and PHP for the contact forms, that's it,
well I told him how much it'd cost, each page or the whole website,

now I see freelancers that charging per hour of work, I mean what da fuck,
how the fuck should the customer know how much hours u've been working on his project? I mean he can't approve anything and you can be mustarbating for 4 hours and get the job done within 1 hour , so they'd charge the customer for 5 hours?
comeon..

how that method of payment should be done? I'd understand companies that charging per hour but freelancers? how's that possibly can be fair?

I know u fucktards won't answer me without boobs so here u go:

amlu-01.jpg

amlu-02.jpg

amlu-03.jpg

amlu-05.jpg

amlu-11.jpg

amlu-18.jpg
 


^ Nice. Why not charge hourly if you are experienced enough? I guess it depends on client too. Big companys could pay much more than some 1 man company.
 
megashape said:
yes butt my question was - how's the client supposed to know how much hours I have spent on his work? The customers just relies on the freelancers good hearts?
Click to expand...


Basically


You give them a quote...Say....I work for 22 dollars an hour and it will probably take me 4 hours to complete this project. 4 x 22 = 88 dollars...if you find you will need more time, contact them and see if they can budget the extra time needed...if not then you stick to that 88 dollars you said before and possibly take a loss of a couple hours of your time...eventually you will figure out how long it takes and will be accurate with your quotes...this way if they request more stuff to be done, you can tell them "this will take an extra two hours"...they understand the price will then go up...

either way works, charging hourly or by project...but if you keep working for the same person charging hourly usually works out better on both ends...
 
roclafamilia said:
Basically


You give them a quote...Say....I work for 22 dollars an hour and it will probably take me 4 hours to complete this project. 4 x 22 = 88 dollars...if you find you will need more time, contact them and see if they can budget the extra time needed...if not then you stick to that 88 dollars you said before and possibly take a loss of a couple hours of your time...eventually you will figure out how long it takes and will be accurate with your quotes...this way if they request more stuff to be done, you can tell them "this will take an extra two hours"...they understand the price will then go up...

either way works, charging hourly or by project...but if you keep working for the same person charging hourly usually works out better on both ends...
Click to expand...

Shame on me,
I probably could double my income with some stubborn customers,
Sometimes little retouches could last more than the time u spend on the original sketch :S
 
Interesting little feature of Notepad is that pressing F5 will give you a time and date stamp.
When I've done work on an hourly basis before, I've just kept a file called timelog.txt in the file, where I just press F5 when I start work for the day, and again when I finished, then worked out the number of minutes worked in total, and billed that.

This is after I'd given them an estimate on how long it would take me of course.

And those are some great tits. Where'd they come from?
 
HarveyJ said:
Interesting little feature of Notepad is that pressing F5 will give you a time and date stamp.
When I've done work on an hourly basis before, I've just kept a file called timelog.txt in the file, where I just press F5 when I start work for the day, and again when I finished, then worked out the number of minutes worked in total, and billed that.

This is after I'd given them an estimate on how long it would take me of course.

And those are some great tits. Where'd they come from?
Click to expand...

Have u ever worked with someone that didn't agree with your hours arrangement?
I mean there are plenty of stubborns & misers that would argue on each cent comes out of their pocket...

anyway thanks :)

and the tits are stumbled upon :1bluewinky:
 
megashape said:
yes butt my question was - how's the client supposed to know how much hours I have spent on his work? The customers just relies on the freelancers good hearts?
Click to expand...


You should be giving an estimate before the work begins. And if you are going to estimate hours I would suggest you come up with three numbers to give to the client instead of one: an optimistic number (you finished the work quicker than expected), a normal number (what you initially think the work will take), and a pessimistic number (the customer throws a curve ball at you and you end up working more than anticipated). So if you initially thought a lander would take 5 hours you might throw out 4/5/6.5 when setting the clients expectations.
 
I've always been more of a value based person. I'll do it for $XXXX ... if you don't work that way, your cheap ass clients (they're all cheap asses) will bicker about the time you spent until you give them the finger and tell them you're not working with them anymore.

This is truly a beautiful shot

amlu-05.jpg
 
Always charge by the hour, and get 30% up front.

Reason for that is those stubborn customers you mentioned. They will change everything around X times and cost you loads of money (and patience).

As soon as a price tag is attached, those change requests seem to get less.

If you are lucky, you will have customers still insisting on changes upon changes - we call them the geese that lay golden eggs. Cherish them.

Example from a completely different area, about a guy who learned the hard way to charge by hour. (My brother in law)

He knows loads about building / renovating, etc.. So my family hired him to redo one of the rooms. We knew this would be more work than it looked like, because the house was very, very old. So we pushed him for an hourly rate, insisting on paying him hourly, even. But he would have none of it, taking only the material costs + 500$

Poor sod had to do the walls for 2 weeks, as they crumbled beneath his fingers when he removed the wallpapering. But then, 500$ it was.

He did this one MORE time, rebuilding a chimney for someone. Same error on his side, spent loads more time than he wanted on it.

After that, he charged hourly.

.............

Of course, this also depends on the work you are doing. When I do a SEO analysis, which I did for freelancing a couple of times. I know how long it takes me to arrive at the finished product (report), and there is not much the customer can change mid-work.

With work like that, you can charge a fixed price.

::emp::
 
emp said:
Always charge by the hour, and get 30% up front.

Reason for that is those stubborn customers you mentioned. They will change everything around X times and cost you loads of money (and patience).

As soon as a price tag is attached, those change requests seem to get less.

If you are lucky, you will have customers still insisting on changes upon changes - we call them the geese that lay golden eggs. Cherish them.

Example from a completely different area, about a guy who learned the hard way to charge by hour. (My brother in law)

He knows loads about building / renovating, etc.. So my family hired him to redo one of the rooms. We knew this would be more work than it looked like, because the house was very, very old. So we pushed him for an hourly rate, insisting on paying him hourly, even. But he would have none of it, taking only the material costs + 500$

Poor sod had to do the walls for 2 weeks, as they crumbled beneath his fingers when he removed the wallpapering. But then, 500$ it was.

He did this one MORE time, rebuilding a chimney for someone. Same error on his side, spent loads more time than he wanted on it.

After that, he charged hourly.

.............

Of course, this also depends on the work you are doing. When I do a SEO analysis, which I did for freelancing a couple of times. I know how long it takes me to arrive at the finished product (report), and there is not much the customer can change mid-work.

With work like that, you can charge a fixed price.

::emp::
Click to expand...

ok, thank you,

I do web design, sketches + retouches + xhtml & css.
I just want to do the math for myself, for instance regular small whores review website
(for the common package, say I'll charge 40$/hour):

Sketches:
Home page - approx. 3 hours
Sub-page (Like websites department or something) - approx. 1 hour
sketches = 4 hours = 160$
Retouches - approx. 1-2 hours (if the client was pretty satisfied) = 80$
xhtml&css - approx. 4 hours (with all the fixes and compatibility issues) = 160$

total = 400$

am I doin' it right?
 
Only time I had someone dispute was when I had what emp called a Golden Goose.
Guy asked for a shitload of changes and then said it couldn't possibly have taken so long.
I said the original hadn't, but he kept changing parts of it, and if he'd like the original one prior to all the changes he made me do, I had that version still saved.

He paid.

The moral of the story is that if the customer decides to screw you, make sure you still have the version that had all the problems with it ;)
 
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