Hi, When you've got a client and you are ready to start working for him. How do you charge? Per hour? A fixed sum on the project? Which do you think is the best? Thanks
Per hour is hard to judge online. I normally look for programmers who are willing to work for a flat rate.
Both... We'll charge per project if it's a big job, so that there's no hidden surprises. We'll charge by the hourly for smaller tasks.
Depends how exact the client is: for well-defined jobs I will do fixed fee but I prefer to charge per hour
I charge per man-day.. given a detail job specifications, I'll determine how many man-days will be required and quote accordingly..
I prefer per project, it's both a business decision and a marketing thing. Spending 10 hours doing HTML/CSS work is not the same as writing a complicated site ripper or writing some cutting edge scripts, so I hate saying I charge $xx per hour when one can take almost zero brain power to do, and the other actually requires some complicated thought processes (which yes, isn't more time, but it does require quite a bit more effort). On that same token, if it's per-hour then it's not in my best interest to rush the job and try to get it done as quickly as possible if the payout is less for completing it ahead of schedule. When people are pricing projects, and I tell them I charge $75 an hour, a lot of times they'll turn around and say that they can get someone to do it for $40, but coming apples to apples, if you type 90+ words a minute and have more experience than someone else, 1 hour worth of work is not going to be equivalent to 1 hour for someone else. I've done the per-hour bit, and it rarely ends well. It either takes a lot less time than we had calculated, so we're losing money, or it takes a lot more time, but we usually try to get a price cap going on so either the client pays more than they were expecting, or we do a lot more work than expected but the profit isn't there.
I also prefer per project, simply because its more open and honest. The client has no way of knowing when you are actually working on the project, or when your goofing off watching a movie instead, so this makes hourly rates questionable. I feel you will get more business rating by the project.
I agree with this! I personally chose the "per project" billing method because I work from home and it is extremely difficult to keep track of actual time spent to bill by the hour properly with the various distractions of working from home. Not to mention, it is extremely difficult to prove to a client that the hours billed are the hours you spent on a project especially if the client disputes your invoice and asks for a more detailed explanation. I always make sure the client knows that the price quoted up front is the price at the end unless the scope of the project changes. This way, there are no surprises and the client can make an informed decision up front as to whether they want to proceed or not. To may times have I been burned as the buyer/client when someone says the job will take X hours a $Y/hour and I end up getting a bill for double that. I personally look for per project costs if I need work done myself. But its all up to what one feels comfortable with.
Most freelance programmers and freelance project buyers prefer to charge /pay per project not per hour since it is hardly known how many hours it will take to complete the project.
I don't disagree there, but I don't think that you could say that non-freelancers don't prefer that as well. I wouldn't really consider my business "freelancers", we've got office space setup, a decent client list that has almost a never-ending supply of work, yet the only time that we do per-hour is when it's emergency work. In that case it's better to say it's going to cost $xx-$xxx per hour, we'll do so many hours and then let you know how it's going. It sucks when clients get upset because you bill them for more hours than they were expecting, but it sucks even more when you bill them for a lot less than you've got into it Takes a while to learn and figure out exactly time-wise what things will cost.