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How Much Should I Rate Myself For My Freelancing Services?

“How much should I charge the client for my freelancing services?”

This dreadful question has been bugging us ever since we started our freelancing career. While it’s easy to us to brag about our skills, abilities, work experience by building an online profile, oftentimes it becomes a touchy or sensitive topic the moment we started talking about payment rates. As much as possible, we wanted to skip having this kind of conversation, however, it’s inevitable. Before you start committing to a work, especially online work where no contracts are available, it’s important to have a mutual understanding about payment rate.

How much should we rate our services that are compromisable to both sides? How much should we charge ourselves worthy for our skills, time, and dedication? How do we charge our freelancing services that are also justifiable to our clients?

In this post, we will guide not only the freelancers but also the employers about the right payment rates they should give before start committing to work. But before we discuss that, let us familiarize ourselves with the type of projects you’ll be encountering when you work online.

Hourly Rate

hourly-300x285This type of project means that your services rendered are rated per hour. Le’s say you’re about to work 8 hours and your rate per hour is around $10, it means you’re guaranteed to have around $80 for that day. For most freelancers, this is the best option to start working. Hourly rate means that every time you rendered for the client will not go to waste.

You won’t end up exhausting yourself by rendering more work just to finish the project because even if your client requires you to render overtime, you are also guaranteed that you’ll get paid for it.

Daily Rate

Daily rate is the usual rate you’ll receive if you work in 9-5 office jobs usually. This means that you’ll be able to receive a fixed rate no matter how many hours you rendered to work for that particular day. Daily rate is essentially good if you can finish working on the project ahead of time. In this way, you are guaranteed to still get your desired rate even if you work it for only 4-5 hours.

Fixed Rate

However, if the project is big, complex, and you mostly have a tight deadline to beat, we recommend you go for a fixed rate. This type of project means that your payment rates are already fixed for the entire duration of the project, no matter how many hours, days, or months, you rendered. If you find yourself dealing with big, complex, long-term projects, it’s better to offer your premium services rates.

freelancer-300x169This is because if you try to do it per hour, let’s say, your rate is around $40/hour and the project duration is 1 week. That roughly estimates around $2240 for one week. That quote is both expensive for you and your client. But if you try to compromise a fixed rate, let’s say, around $2000 for the entirety of the project, this comes a better option. Furthermore, you can also finish the project ahead of time. This gives you the opportunity to take more projects while you’re guaranteed that you’ll still be getting the $2000 you agreed for the project.

So, How much Should you Rate Yourself as a Freelancer?

The truth is, there really is no formula since every one of us had unique needs and preference. However, we can give you a rough estimate based on your pricing, estimated costs, and expenses.

Example, in New York, their hourly rate is around $30 for a worker, but it would still vary according to your qualifications. Let us multiply it by 8 hours and you’ll roughly get $240/day or around $1200/week (given you only work for 5 days a week). We think it’s already a good rate if you are just starting out and more focused on building your portfolio and experience.

However, if you’re already a seasoned worker, you may need to increase your rate a bit. Not only because your skills and qualifications require you so, but you also need to consider your bills and expenses for a month. Calculate your rental fee, electricity and water bills, the internet, etc, and include it to your payment rate. We recommend you go for fixed price instead of hourly rate.

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