ASK IH: Freelancer Rates
ASK IH: Freelancer Rates
Hi indie hackers!
I have been working as a freelancer for the past 2 weeks. I am currently developing a streaming platform but we are just starting out so it's pretty basic Django code development. I have a few questions about pricing and how should I go about it. For example, should I go hourly, by milestone, by finished project? Do you have any fun story? I wanna know :)
P.S. For reference I am a freshman in university and I have worked in 2 companies doing internships before all in the related field of computer science/software development.
Personally I never work in less than day increments - and if it's a big project, weekly. Never less than a day though. Unless you're only doing tiny jobs like uploading a few files or changing a title tag, you should always be able to do a day rate (plus you don't want to be doing such tiny jobs anyway).
Definitely hourly. Great advice already posted.
In regards to rates, go with entry level developers "salary" in your area then take that number and divide by 1250 is a rule of thumb I advise from the start. Helps you cover your own taxes and what not, with no benefit and no vacation.
For example a 50k per year salary = $40 per hour.
Having known some of my friends who have been freelancers they go by industry standards, which is billing per hour. Another good reason to do it so is because all the tools that are built out there that support payroll and stuff work around time rather than milestones. It also gels well with time tracking applications which a lot of freelancers tend to use for their billing.
Tieing your billables with launch or milestones leaves you exposed to mistakes on the clients front. If the product planning is messed up on the client's front you are going to be penalized for having not met the milestone, or some shady agreement needs to be reached then.
In short, go for hourly billing, makes it worthwile for both ✌️
I second this - I can say from my experience (years freelancing) that unless you're pretty certain you can make a great deal with a lot of padding, you're better off billing hourly.
If you're a freshman, you likely have no business contacts. So even if somebody does give you a project to work on and pay when finished (or by milestone), it's not going to be a lot. Later on, with a lot more people you know, you can ask an embarasingly high price for a project, and get it, and then even if something does happen, you should be well covered.