The former - I mostly work with large non-tech corporates, so you need to have a business case to get anything of significance approved anyway. I typically star

The former - I mostly work with large non-tech corporates, so you need to have a business case to get anything of significance approved anyway. I typically start off at 10% of "the big number on the slide." If I'm independent, I always work fixed fee & payment schedule. When I've had a big company at my back, I've also worked at X% of realized revenue, capped at $Y. Now, the important thing this implies is ownership of the outcome. I'm not building "a website;" I'm building "an e-commerce product" (or whatever) with all the expectations that come with it. Back to the article... looking at the rates again, I think this is the author's next step in pricing. They're obviously very good. To make it as an independent developer, you need to have a clear understanding of value anyway - so why not just estimate the outcome ahead of time and benchmark against it?