How much does your hour cost?

Honestly, I used to take that approach with writing (I started at $0.0075 per word), but you're better off charging what you are really worth. You may not get every job, but the jobs you do get will be of higher quality. Just my two cents

 

Yeah, but you end up working yourself to the bone for next to nothing that way, and when clients see you offering yourself so low, it's very very hard to raise prices later w/o losing those clients. I work with consultants and freelancers in various fields, and it's the same thing anywhere you go. Look at it this way... With my article writing, I could work 1 hour, make $500, and you'd have to work 100 hours at your rate to earn that amount, while I'm chilling out sipping martinis. j/k Listen to what someone else said... don't ever sell yourself short. You need to think about setting realistic rates now, factoring in cost of living, taxes, etc.... even if you still live with parents or something. Otherwise, it'll never become a real full-time job with serious potential for you, because like I said, raising those rates later can be next to impossible, especially when clients expect you to serve as their cheap labor.

Jenn

 

You make $500 an hour writing articles? I saw you offering to write press releases for $25 a piece Just curious how that works out...

 

I wouldn't do this job if I only made 5$ a hour. You can make that working any unskilled job. (Heck my relatives pay me more than that to help them out in their businesses part-time.)

What freelancers do, however, for the most part does require skill. There is no reason to charge so low, it really does not make any sense. Even if you do get countless amounts of work, you can only make a maximum of 40$ a day working the normal 8-hour workday. But if that is enough for you, then more power to you.

Like I said, for me personally I wouldn't do this if I wasn't making at least 20$ a hour. I'd rather not work at all then work for pennies (luckily for me I do have this option as I only need the money for my personal entertainment and food expenses.)

 

Simple... Press Releases are a service I offer through my PR firm. All articles I write are generally done on a freelance basis with large clients who hire me for my marketing and business expertise. It's not about being paid to write. It's about being paid to share what you know about your industry. I make $400 - 500 per hour writing articles for most of my clients (with a few exceptions I made either because they started working w/ me quite a while ago or because I love the niche topic).

My press release rate is actually $75 per piece. The $25 is just a special I extended through the summer, because I was getting a good response here in DP. I hadn't thought of targeting website owners initially, and so I decided to use it as an opportunity to expand into another niche. Most "real" PR professionals charge between $150-500 per release. I keep them low because that one service keeps me competitive and brings me larger contracts (a big difference than just taking $5 per hour to be "competitive" though). For instance, I've gone from writing one press release to being contracted to run a national radio campaign (several thousand dollars).

To me, press releases are just a marketing tool. I write them because I enjoy them for some crazy reason, I tend to rate highly with them, and it lets me explore a variety of industries with PR (anything from music to the automotive field) while giving me something to pad my portfolio with. It's a very simple way to catch a good client's attention. Sure, most don't hire me for other work. But those few that do are the reason I'm on schedule to make a very high 5-figure income this year, and a 6-figure one next year (would have been a likely 6 this year, except the first quarter I focused on a different approach that wasn't terribly effective). The sudden boom in smaller contracts (much to the thanks of a particular client here who was kind enough to send some referrals) is simply a way to pass my time around larger contracts, and pack a bit of extra money away like for a trip to France I'm now planning. They really add up. The plan next year is to bring in a recent PR graduate, train them in my style, and hire them to pick up smaller projects like releases, while I focus on my company's split with music and book publicity campaigns.

The point though, is that you need to have a strategy and a solid business plan. This works exceptionally well for me. Accepting less than a basic minimum wage isn't helping you. $5 / hour might leave you actually making only a few cents per hour if you're doing things legally (assuming you're in the US). It means you're not thinking about business expenses, taxes, or making enough to actively market yourself as effectively as possible.

Jenn

 

Very interesting, thanks for your response!

 

How many hors do you work a day jenn?

 

So you aspire to make roughly $9,600 per year. ( do the math- 40hr/week@$5per/hour) I think your talent is being wasted. You should be at the local burger joint.

Do the rest of us a favor and don't devalue the webmaster profession. Decent webmasters are not very common on the local level. Most firms I know of charge from $35-$65 per hour. Some are upwards of 100. Webmastering involves many things before and after the sale. Often times you may have to "pound the pavement" a few weeks just to get that next weeks work. Though those hours are not billable they are a neccessary aspect of operation. In addition certain liabilities and ongoing expectations usually occur in any freelance transaction. Add to that any costs of advertising and the self employed tax rate and you should be getting the picture.

Be reasonable yet ask enough to make a living. I usually charge $25 per hour.

When you work for nothing you hurt everyone involved in webmastering.

 

This also applies to all the freelance writers on DP!

 

Another good point to consider is...
When you charge a low amount, many people will assume that if you don't value your expertise and experience any more than that, then you must not be very good and/or must not have much experience.

I have won many a contract bid while overbidding my competition considerably.

 

Someone mentioned "doing the math" at $5/hr x 40 hrs/week. That's not even correct... it's actually much worse than that. Freelancers and consultants in all fields average 22-23 "billable hours" per week. The rest (if they're doing the job right) is spent on administrative work like marketing themselves, drafting contracts, dealing with accounting records, filing, etc.

That's actually a huge mistake that causes a lot of independent professionals to go out of business far too quickly. You also have to consider that (at least in the US) you have higher taxes, because you pay both your half and the employer's half when you pay self-employment tax, because you're essentially you're own "employee".

So, as a hypothetical example:

Let's say you even charge $15 / hour (which might not be so bad for someone just starting out, who's used to working as an employee instead of being self-employed).

You may think... $15/hr x 40 hrs/week = $600/week x 52 weeks/yr. = $31,200. Doesn't sound too bad for starting out, right?

Now look at the reality:

$15/hr x 23 hrs/week =$345/week x 52 weeks/yr. = $17,940. Not so great anymore, is it?

Now let's be even more realistic:

From that $18,000 (just rounding up), in the US, your federal income taxes alone would be $7335 (based on the 2005 income tax schedule). Then you would have self-employment taxes of $2754 (15.3% of your income). That already brings you down to $7911. And you haven't factored in business expenses yet, not to mention your basic expenses like rent (if you don't still live w/ your parents or something), food, clothes, etc. It also hasn't accounted for your state and local taxes yet either. In reality, you'd have very little money. And even if you're still a kid and living at home, is it seriously worth it when you could be making several times that much, stashing it away for college, a car, or to put towards a home or something? So really, do the math first. It's not as cut and dry as most people would like to think. But that's also why most people fail.

Jenn

 

No big deal, a lot of people, myself included, think they can do better by charging less when they first start out and almost everyone slowly realizes that there is no reason to do so when people are willing to pay more.

 

I don't think these numbers are realistic. I could be wrong but I do not think you will have to pay $7335 from $18,000. I think with that level of income you will get min tax and not 40% tax as you estimated.

Just played around with IRS site : for 18000 .. anticipated income tax for 2006 $1,059. (single with no deductions)

Source:
http://www.irs.gov/individuals/page/0,,id=14806,00.html

 

Or you will just get flooded by requests and won't be able to handle them and just make everyone mad.

Another thing I learned is that people that have a few bucks in their pockets are the ones that expect you to do wonders and complain and whine all the time. People who pay decent amounts have a clear idea of what they want are are very easy to work with

 

£300 per day here, half the price that out webdesigners go at
That's London for you though!

 

I work at least 12 hours a day, sometimes up to 18, 5-7 days a week. But despite all the "overtime" I still only bill around 22-23 hours each week directly to clients. The rest is spent working on company projects like sites I'm developing, writing content for my own sites, and working on a book proposal that I was asked to submit. Not all of my work is being trapped behind a desk either though. I still have a large focus on music publicity and go to shows when I can to scout bands as potential clients or to have one of my writers for the webzine work with. And the reason I can put in so many hours every day is that quite frankly, I love what I do. That's the most important thing in my opinion. My work doesn't feel like "work" all the time, and that makes a huge difference. If I didn't thoroughly love what I do, I'd never be able to put in the time that I want to.

Jenn

 

You're right, and I apologize. But your number is still off. It comes to (using the 2005 schedule again) $730 + 15% of any amount over $7300, which comes to $2335. That's what I get for posting so late. I'm sorry.

That will leaves you with something like $12,000 not counting expenses for your business, state and local taxes, or any personal living expenses though, and still doesn't come close to making a real "living". Not only that, but I had based these numbers off of a rate of $15/hour. The person I was referring to was only charging $5/hour. So sorry for the confusion, but hopefully you still see the point of how unrealistic such low rates can be when you're working as an independent professional.

Jenn

 

That's also probably the number one mistake of independent professionals in any field. I had the opportunity several months ago to work with a top management consultant in the US, and he actually had done some writing on the issue that was pretty interesting ... discussing how these professionals are slowly "waking up" and moving to more of a value-based pricing system. It's the undervaluing of their time that makes it almost impossible to later raise rates to a decent level, and why so many never make it past their first year ... if even that long, or at least why they can't survive on a f/t basis.

Jenn

 

125 dollars an hour is a realistic basement figure. If you are not doing consulting work but rather working for yourself entirely then you also need to factor in the opportunity cost for spending your time on somebody else's project rather than your own.

 

Good points jhmattern!