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When I worked at a consulting firm we liked a single rate. Don't paint yourself into a corner and waste your time by having a complicated set of rates especiall

by andymoe 14y ago

When I worked at a consulting firm we liked a single rate. Don't paint yourself into a corner and waste your time by having a complicated set of rates especially if you are a one man/woman show. Take what you are considering as your highest rate, double it, (because if you are like 90pct of people I know your are probably under charging) and use that. (I'm only half kidding here) The overhead to keep your complicated rate structure straight can be difficult for an organization and especially hard for an individual or one man show. More importantly it makes the sales process more complicated. You spend time laying out your complicated rate plan instead of getting them to agree to a proposal and SOW and giving you a nice chunk of money up front based on that estimate. If you are freelancing you absolutely should get a percent of the money up front especially for a new relationship. You can always offer people a discount rate for larger commitments of work if you like - now you are doing them a favor. Set the expectation of availability early for short term emergency work and don't do an hourly rate at all for this if you can help it. Get good at estimating and give them a (high) project based price that reflects your costs for bumping them to the front of the line.

samuellevy 14y ago
So far the stuff that has qualified for the "Emergency rate" has been along the lines of "My server/website/software is down/badly misbehaving, and a simple re-start won't fix it. I'm bleeding money, please help." It's the type of thing where I don't (and they don't) know what it will take to fix it, but getting things running again (and fast) is important. I can't give a quote without being able to see the actual situation, so an hourly rate to just band-aid the problem makes sense. I'll usually follow up with "Here's what the cause was, this is what it will take to fix it _properly_, and I could fit it in next week. Would you like to get it fixed?", which has been a great success at gaining me more work and very happy clients. In general, they are happy to pay the higher rate because when it gets to that situation, leaving it for longer will cost them more than paying a higher rate to get it running. Once it's done, then they're usually more than happy to talk about a longer term fix to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

by andymoe 14y ago

samuellevy 14y ago

So far the stuff that has qualified for the "Emergency rate" has been along the lines of "My server/website/software is down/badly misbehaving, and a simple re-start won't fix it. I'm bleeding money, please help." It's the type of thing where I don't (and they don't) know what it will take to fix it, but getting things running again (and fast) is important. I can't give a quote without being able to see the actual situation, so an hourly rate to just band-aid the problem makes sense. I'll usually follow up with "Here's what the cause was, this is what it will take to fix it _properly_, and I could fit it in next week. Would you like to get it fixed?", which has been a great success at gaining me more work and very happy clients. In general, they are happy to pay the higher rate because when it gets to that situation, leaving it for longer will cost them more than paying a higher rate to get it running. Once it's done, then they're usually more than happy to talk about a longer term fix to ensure that it doesn't happen again.