Skip to main content

Freelancing Part 1 - How Much to Charge?

Lately I've been freelancing a lot which has been great. I love the flexibility and control I have over my own time. I'm so busy, however it's hard to just manage that time. But my biggest worry is negotiating the right rate.

In order to figure out the right rate I asked several friends & colleagues for their insight. It's interesting to compare what they said:

Susan pointed me to this article which offers a calculation of freelance rates based on what you would be making if you were getting a salary. According to this I should be making between $90-120/hour. Calculating Your Freelance Rates - Part 1

A friend spoke more about Stock options. Since I work with a lot of start-up companies this is relevant. They are always trying to figure out creative ways to pay employees which I find does NOT work especially if you have overhead. He says, "...They should be indifferent between paying you in cash versus stock- perhaps they are trying to "get a deal" from you. You should ask them what the shares were priced at when they raised money- that's effectively what they are paying you: (number of shares * value of shares at the previous funding round). Just like Mad Money- shares and share price."

Also said to go check out Salary.com to see what you should be making.

Tam directed me to the salary survey on Coroflot.com which came up with numbers way below what Salary.com shows. This is weird, maybe Coroflot doesn't have a large enough set of data to be accurate?

Pedro Sostre, a design director I admire said it's better to politely decline work than take a cut on price. Many people who go the budget route may return in the future because they're not happy with the cheaper work.

Keara, another design director I admire has always told me to stick to my guns in regard to rate. Citing that there are not than many design directors who are set up to design high traffic, interactive media. Taking into account these overhead costs is a huge deal:
- Cost of software
- Cost of hardware
- Utilities, and recurring expenses like the phone, internet & ISP
- Payroll for employees & sub contractors
- Rent (or mortgage)

All these factors add onto your rate. I would love to see comments from other internet designers about their rates and their success stories.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Human / Nature

About twelve years ago I didn’t really understand Climate Change but I was actually looking forward to it, sort-of like a good mystery I could become enthralled with.  At the time all I knew was I wanted a different lifestyle, and I thought, maybe Climate Change might make that happen? Maybe my life will actually be better because of it?  I had this fantasy about being a self sufficient bohemian gourmet, growing my own food harvested right in my yard. Mother Earth magazine seemed so bucolic. I wanted the opposite of my cramped apartment in San Francisco. In 2008 Climate Change was just an excuse to make changes, quit a job and move.   I moved East, close to my dad. I didn’t mention anything about Climate Change to my father, a total denier who was a meteorologist when he was in his 20s. There was no amount of practical data that would change his mind. He retired in ’93, with nothing to be stressed about so he simply didn’t care about anything but football, fishing and food.  

The Unsatisfying Story of Vegan Penn Jillette

Every so often my husband will mention how he’s interested in becoming vegetarian. Yesterday he was telling me about Penn Jillette, the famous comedian from Penn & Teller. He had read how Jillette is now a vegan, saying with personal interest that Jillette said “he feels so much better now.” First I was perplexed, we are both Penn & Teller fans and as performers over the years Penn Jillette struck me as an unapologetic manly man, veganism seems totally at odds with his character. I also barked at my burger loving husband, “What would you eat if you became a vegan? What do you even like that’s vegetarian?” There was no reply because my husband leaves all the food decisions up to me and I am nowhere close to being a vegetarian myself.  I wanted to know more about this so I go online and Google ‘Penn Jillette Vegan’ and found this LA Times article ;  “At 6 feet, 6 inches and 330 pounds, he was hospitalized for his high blood pressure and a 90% heart blockage. Already taki

UX Design Process aka Web Product Design Process

So... I'm on Pinterest updating a 'board' for my portfolio and I discover that other people have pinned my Experience Design Process graphic from my website. Apparently this graphic comes right up in Google Searches if you search on on Experience Design Process. Since the image on my site is small I'm re-posting the graphic here! Can anybody guess what this image was originally create for? I don't know what I was thinking about these colors! So what is going on here? In the middle of the graphic is a series of linear main steps to take in order to design an interactive digital product. The process starts with identifying a project's goals and ends with meeting those goals. In order to meet those goals you need to do some careful work... Surrounding the steps are a set of tasks (or methodologies) to perform in order to complete each step of the process. Over-arching the entire process are guidelines like "vetting" and "informed iteratio