One answer on how to charge your clients

Question from a young designer I just got a freelance opportunity to do some book publications for a local business and wanted to see if I could get some insight on how to charge them appropriately. I'm not sure if I should charge then hourly or a flat rate. If you have any suggestions that would be great!

My response

There are a lot of different thoughts about this. For instance, long term you could set up price levels for different sizes of clients: like $10 for desperate pro-bonos, $20 for non-profits and small businesses, $40 for freelance clients and $80 for design agency freelance (typically they would turn around and re-bill your work fro $100-$150 to their clients).

But most of the time I come up with an estimate number and share that with my client. I arrive at that number by guessing the amount of hours it might take and multiplay that by the appropriate hourly rate:

8 hours of work X $10/hr = $80

Thinking in the clients shoes I would raise to $100 per edition if they have plenty of money.

And my word of caution with publications: sometimes there are rounds of copy revisions so I would build that into your initial estimate. With that in mind, you could charge them hourly for the first and second editions, then based upon the amount of time spent and your hourly rate, arrive at a flat fee for all future editions. Your first edition may take longest due to setting up a new template — therefore keep track of time per task and phase of work to accurately capture your labor.

All these rates are purely subjective and you can create your own based upon your perceived worth. Lastly, I've heard a theory that you should come up with a price for your design and if you lose more than 50% of the client requests who come to you then reevaluate your prices lower until hit a sweet spot of staying busy within your market.