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Freelance doesn't mean you aren't responsible to clients during normal hours. But it does mean that you can generally can have a more flexible schedule. My co
by davismwfl 12y ago
Freelance doesn't mean you aren't responsible to clients during normal hours. But it does mean that you can generally can have a more flexible schedule.
My comments below assume this client knows you are not a dedicated resource to them, if they expect you are then you are really just a contract employee and then you need to be available all X hours of their workday and it is not reasonable to charge any additional fees.
First, set your hourly rate: $XXX/per hour of working hours. This doesn't vary.
For support/training questions, 24 hour response on all questions no additional costs. You should always make an effort to answer fairly quickly even with this. Cap it to Weekday only, meaning a question answered on Friday afternoon may not be answered until Monday.
Optionally, 4 hour response on all questions, additional cost of $xxxx per month for the guaranteed response time. If the question takes more than 15 minutes to research and answer then you also get your billable rate in increments of 15 minutes with a 1 hr minimum. Also, put a cap on the number of questions within an 24 hour period that qualify for the 4 hour response time. Ask me how I know, DOH!
From this template you can play with the numbers, response time etc. But effectively if they know you are not dedicated to them, then all this is reasonable. We sign these regularly with clients and don't really hear any complaints. In fact we went to this because we would get complaints from clients that sent us an email on Tuesday at 2pm and didn't get a response from us until late that night or the next morning. So I instituted the 24hr response unless you pay for dedicated access. Since then I haven't had any complaints and honestly we get back to people faster because they are paying for it. The other side affect is you can hire contractors yourself to help cover questions when needed because you have the revenue to support it.