Update: I see a lot of new freelancers still trying to charge by the hour for everything

Back when I started, everyone just swapped hours for dollars. It seemed safe. But after a project where I quoted $50 an hour for a website and it took me 80 hours because the client kept changing things, I made $4000 for what felt like a month of my life. The next site I did, I charged a flat $7500 for the same scope and finished it in three focused weeks. That shift from trading time to selling a finished result was everything. I see people online asking 'what's your hourly rate?' and it sets them up to be nickel-and-dimed on every revision. You're not a temp worker, you're solving a problem. Value your outcome, not your clock. What's a project you finally switched to a flat fee for, and how did it go?

3 comments

3 Comments

lilykelly4d ago

Oh man, the hourly trap is so real. Fell into it myself doing blog posts, billing by the hour while the client rewrote every single sentence. Ended up making like twelve bucks an hour after all that fuss. Switched to a flat rate per article and suddenly my time was my own again.

lisaf3812d ago

My cousin does freelance graphic design and she got burned bad on an hourly logo job. The client wanted endless tiny tweaks, like moving a leaf two pixels left. She switched to flat rate packages with a set number of revisions. It cut the back and forth drama in half.

morgan.logan11d ago

Switching to a flat $3000 fee for my social media packs was a game changer, just like @lisaf38 said about her cousin's logo work. It stopped those endless tiny change requests cold.