Hello,
I've been "freelancing" for 2-3 years now. Initially, I was wildly understimating the amount of time needed for project, and on top of that slashing my prices (to be "competitive"), and ended up working for peanuts. Sure it made some persons very happy, and did work to some extent in getting the word around.
I can still remember when the designer I worked with wanted to make my share $400 for the develpment of a small website with a back-end. I thought that was a lot, and was kinda timid to accept the money... I was sometimes even working for less then that.
Over time, I naturally slowly raised my estimates, as I realized that it often demanded more work than what it looked like, and my time estimates were just visions that never materialized.
In parallel, quality grew and the libraries and code used became more mature.
But as I pushed the prices up, I had encouters with another situation: One customer who paid well for a project that took actually less time than expected. At the same time, on the other end, there was a customer who was making sure he got twice or three time every one of his dollar's worth. He was always inserting new modifications, finding minor imperfections, sending emails and IMs anytime (even in the middle of the night), expecting me to be always available to him, and setting deadlines while at the same time making it difficult to meet them by constantly inserting new tasks. This situation was lowering my morale, and it was unfair for the customers, that the annoying one would get all the attention and the "nice" one would be paying much more...
So now I am trying to move any new work towards billing by the hour, the customer gets reports with minute precision if he wants, as well as samples of previous work with the time it took to complete so that he can get an idea of how much time it takes.
At the same time, I've also started billing time spent read emails, as some customers send cryptic emails that are barely intellegibile. Previously, I was not even billing that, and only billing time spent on development.
I am being strict about billing by the hour - if someone really wants to agree on a lump sump before hand, he will be quoted an amount that contains a huge margin of security, and it will be in his best interest to be billed by the hour. I am also much less forthcoming about giving dates and time estimates, as this is also something that is 50% under control of the customer.
What I think I have achieved is a much more sustainable model, and I was wondering about the experiences of other freelancers here on that topic.
I've been "freelancing" for 2-3 years now. Initially, I was wildly understimating the amount of time needed for project, and on top of that slashing my prices (to be "competitive"), and ended up working for peanuts. Sure it made some persons very happy, and did work to some extent in getting the word around.
I can still remember when the designer I worked with wanted to make my share $400 for the develpment of a small website with a back-end. I thought that was a lot, and was kinda timid to accept the money... I was sometimes even working for less then that.
Over time, I naturally slowly raised my estimates, as I realized that it often demanded more work than what it looked like, and my time estimates were just visions that never materialized.
In parallel, quality grew and the libraries and code used became more mature.
But as I pushed the prices up, I had encouters with another situation: One customer who paid well for a project that took actually less time than expected. At the same time, on the other end, there was a customer who was making sure he got twice or three time every one of his dollar's worth. He was always inserting new modifications, finding minor imperfections, sending emails and IMs anytime (even in the middle of the night), expecting me to be always available to him, and setting deadlines while at the same time making it difficult to meet them by constantly inserting new tasks. This situation was lowering my morale, and it was unfair for the customers, that the annoying one would get all the attention and the "nice" one would be paying much more...
So now I am trying to move any new work towards billing by the hour, the customer gets reports with minute precision if he wants, as well as samples of previous work with the time it took to complete so that he can get an idea of how much time it takes.
At the same time, I've also started billing time spent read emails, as some customers send cryptic emails that are barely intellegibile. Previously, I was not even billing that, and only billing time spent on development.
I am being strict about billing by the hour - if someone really wants to agree on a lump sump before hand, he will be quoted an amount that contains a huge margin of security, and it will be in his best interest to be billed by the hour. I am also much less forthcoming about giving dates and time estimates, as this is also something that is 50% under control of the customer.
What I think I have achieved is a much more sustainable model, and I was wondering about the experiences of other freelancers here on that topic.