What I learned from personal experience over the years of freelance

Original author: Samuel Levy
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Originally posted in / r / freelance on Reddit, but post here for posterity.

I have been doing freelance for quite some time and can share bits of knowledge that I have heard or learned myself, often in a difficult way.

A typical full-time employee costs the company 2-3 times more than its nominal salary


Use this as a basis for calculating your rates. $ 90 per hour may seem like an expensive alternative to an employee who receives a salary of $ 30 per hour, but in reality this is the equivalent of $ 90, and the costs cease immediately upon completion of the project.

If a client asks for 6+ hours per day, you will spend 8 hours


You will not do anything useful (read: paid) in the remaining two hours. They took you all day, but they paid only for 75%. In such situations, charge a daily rate.

Leave time for downtime.
Burnout is real, and it sucks. If you burn, you will lose weeks (even months) of work, so it’s better to plan your free time. Try to include "annual leave" in tariffs.

You are a business, not an employee


Some negotiations are in the order of things, but ultimately you are involved in a business transaction, so the client cannot dictate business hours, rates, etc. He can offer or ask about them, but in the end it is you who decides when and on what conditions to work. That leads to…

Unreasonable requests deserve unreasonable rates


For me, “urgent”, “immediate”, “urgent” work immediately adds 30% to the tariff with a minimum payment of two hours. If I have to quit the current project in order to “urgently” add a line of code to your website, then you pay me at least two hours to lose productivity and delay another project. I believe that if this is really an emergency, then the client will gladly pay, but if not, he will prefer to plan the task, like everyone else.

Set your working hours and stick to them


I work rather irregularly during the day and in the evening, but for clients my working hours are from 9 to 17, from Tuesday to Friday. Any inquiries after hours mean an increase in rates by 30%. Please note that this adds up to the tariff for urgency (solving an emergency at midnight will cost at least two hours with a tariff of 160%, even if it takes me 15 minutes). If I myself decide to run during off-hours, I will charge a standard rate, but explicit requests for such work lead to an increase in fare.

Be open, honest and sincere.


The worst thing for a client is to hear about problems the day before (or after) the change. If you have any problems, talk to him in advance and agree on the expectations. Maybe the feature you're stuck with is not really important enough to delay the project, or maybe the delay is just communication problems. In any case, it is always better to speak with the client sooner rather than later. Often they understand and approve a small adjustment to the work plan.

Hunger Does Not Mean Despair


Do not bother with the race for contracts that look problematic. You will only spend valuable time on pain and disappointment. It doesn’t matter that you run out of money (and it shouldn’t end if you set the right rates, but still). Lacking a customer is better than a bad customer, because a bad customer is more expensive than just doing nothing.

If you can't handle it, let another do it


If you are not able to satisfy the client’s request, you can support the community of freelancers - and help the client find a person who can cope. Better yet, hire a subcontractor yourself. Again, make sure you meet customer expectations. Tackling a job in which you do not have enough qualifications is a futile matter, but an open discussion of this with a client generates respect and goodwill.

Your project is infinitely more important for you than for a client.


For a true understanding of this, you need to dive a little into the topic, but ultimately, each business owner is primarily focused on managing his business at the moment . For you, the business is this project, so you are focused on it. At the client, the business is selling widgets or booking llamas, or teaching squids in sign language. Whatever his business, your project does not exactly apply to him. That's why clients sometimes seem uninterested or respond only after two weeks to what you think requires urgent attention. The client is busy with his business, and you are just a risky expense item. The only thing when the project starts to worry the client more than you do is when the client starts to lose money due to problems with the project.

Although some of these things seem fairly obvious, surprisingly a lot of time is required to understand them from experience.

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