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Business How to Freelance Finding Your First Project Understanding Client Goals

Posted by mark simmons
mark simmons
349 Points

how much should I charge per hour for design?

What is the range?

Daniel Carnett
Daniel Carnett
2,244 Points

When setting freelance design rates, make sure that you're providing value for your clients. Most of the time, clients are happy to pay $40 to $100 an hour if you make them happy. Also, don’t need to let them walk all over you, stick to your rates if you really feel you are worth it , but you do want to make a true effort to satisfy your clients.

Daniel

mark simmons
mark simmons
349 Points

Thanks Daniel that's very helpful

2 Answers

Frances Knight
PLUS
Frances Knight
Courses Plus Student 797 Points
Frances Knight
Frances Knight
Courses Plus Student 797 Points

You may also want to think about how much you want to earn per year, try and then break that down into an hourly rate. So for example if you want to earn $20,000 a year, and work say 48 weeks a year. 5 days a week for 6 hours a day then your hourly rate would be roughly $14 per hour. From there take into account tax, pension, and other things like overhead etc. Then you need to take into account the fact you may not have a 100% full work schedule so factor that into your equation also. So if you find you end up working on average 4 hours per day then you will need to increase your hourly rate to match the $20,000 target.

Max Senden
Max Senden
23,177 Points
Max Senden
Max Senden
23,177 Points

For me it also depends on how long the project will take. For very short projects that only take a couple of hours I usually charge double or triple compared to projects that take longer. Having this extra charge is a simply an extra motivation for myself to do something silly like designing a webbanner every once in a while. I wouldn't bother otherwise ;)

Jason Smith
Jason Smith
8,668 Points
Jason Smith
Jason Smith
8,668 Points

this whole discussion is relevant to me as well, i'm considering becoming a freelancer too. But if i wanted to satisfy my customers, but remain competitive by being affordable, how could i further adjust my hours and prices to catch a wider range of quicker jobs like what max said for cheaper prices? Can a freelancer pull that kind of price slashing magic as one person? I should also mention i'm not in a high tech area. I don't know what kind of Cpu problems people have, but I do know the knowledge to deal with them is exceedingly scarce. So I imagine any existing problems would often persist, since the area is poor, and would be likely to turn to working with the local government to fix it.