Surely you have wondered how much your service can cost if you dedicate yourself to freelance work; if so, this article will interest you. How do you calculate the cost of your work per hour?
The pace of work and its different forms are in the process of transformation; entrepreneurship is no exception, this is one of the main reasons why more and more people are engaged in independent work and offer services to different companies.
Especially since to assume your freelance status you must take into account some costs of your daily routine, so we have prepared these notes to facilitate a bit and so that you do not get overwhelmed with the bills!
Every project at the beginning has a level of exigence and sacrifice so that there is a doubt about how much we should charge for our work? How many hours should we spend on it? Among many other concerns that we have in order to save money without unnecessary costs.
For this purpose, it is necessary to calculate the data related to the project or entrepreneurship because after all the house becomes an office and as every office requires an initial investment.
How to charge as a freelance?
There are several things that you should take into account as a freelance; they are recommendations that you can not fail to fulfill the proper development of your work.
In general, the most typical jobs in the freelance world are those related to marketing, communication, video production, digital art, or photography.
If you are a freelance worker, you must follow these tips:
Write down your work hours
First of all, you must define the hours you dedicate per day to develop your work as a freelance; this includes planning your free time.
Estimate how many time you can spend on your projects, the tasks you are going to do and if you will have time to complete each one of them.
The purpose is to plan and organize the work before undertaking any task.
On the internet, you can have easy-to-use tools such as Wunderlist and Evernote that serve to distribute your work hours as a freelance correctly.
You may also need to add extra time to this plan to serve your clients; for example, if you are a writer, there are certain texts that you must send to the edition, so you most likely have to need an additional time frame.
Set a minimum rate
In the beginning, it is somewhat difficult to determine a minimum amount because the question arises how much you should charge for services.
Sometimes, you need some time to join the dynamic and establish a well-paid and productive routine, especially if you are at the beginning of the project.
If you want to go step by step, you can establish flexible rates and try to negotiate with customers, many of them will want the lowest price. So set an average, a maximum, and a minimum so that at the time of negotiation, you are clear about what the limits are.
But if you are an experienced freelance, you have a large client portfolio and a good reputation, surely acquired over the years, do not accept any offer that you consider to be less than your value.
Especially if you have many projects available or a lot of workloads; from time to time, it is convenient to make a discount to frequent customers.
Ask about current market rates
It does not mean that you copy exactly the price of another freelancer, but that you keep abreast of current prices in the market.
You can inform yourself through advisors or with other freelancers, go to special events that have to do with your specialty and be aware of opportunities for freelancers both inside and outside the country.
Currently, there are many ways to invoice as a freelancer, with payment methods such as PayPal you can create a personalized invoice.
Some cooperatives require, to carry out their activity, an invoice to obtain greater profitability. Our advice is that you evaluate the options to determine which is the best option for you.
What should you not do as a freelancer?
- Compare yourself with others.
- Stop studying and preparing in your field.
- Believe you can deal with everything.
How to calculate the price of your work?
It is important to know your costs as a freelance since not having a fixed office does not mean that you do not have to use resources to develop your work fully; if a company has them, why were you going to be the exception?.
Everything you do that implies an expense for the development of your project, you must add it to the budget.
If you pay to have a space, do not forget to check the electricity bill, water, gas expense, the autonomous fee or the manager are some of the fixed expenses that you must take into account to decide the value of your work hours.
You should also establish a pricing strategy in each phase of your professional stage, so if you want to know if there is a formula to calculate all this, we will tell you: yes!
There are even tools that make your life easier, so we provide you with some options for you to choose the one you prefer.
Price per hour = monthly salary + fixed expenses / hours worked per month – unproductive hours.
Freelance tools
If you don’t like mathematical formulas, you can use these websites:
To calculate the freelance price or simply to know how much to charge as a freelance:
Being a freelancer gives you the freedom you need! And if with that you undertake an innovative project that allows you to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the market while doing what you like, then you already have half of the road won.
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