E-BOOK
Pricing Freelance Work
Eight chapters on building a rate from what you need and the days you can actually bill, rather than from what everyone else charges. Almost everyone prices by looking sideways, and the freelancers they are looking at did the same thing, so the whole market drifts on a number nobody worked out.
- Eight chapters, four tables, one worked year throughout
- Why the year has 167 billable days rather than 260
- What an employed equivalent actually costs the employer
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Who this e-book is for
Freelancers, contractors and consultants setting a rate for the first time or reviewing one they have not touched in years, who would rather work the number out than benchmark it against people guessing.
You divided what you need by the working days in a year
Then every number after it is a third too low. A freelance year has about 167 billable days out of 261 weekdays, once holiday, sickness and the work of finding work come out. Chapter four runs the same £64,000 both ways: £383 a day over 167 days, £246 over 260, and a year that finishes £22,892 short with nothing else having gone wrong.
A client says your rate is more than they pay staff
They are comparing the wrong numbers, and chapter three gives you the reply. A £55,000 salary costs an employer £64,150 once employer National Insurance and the minimum pension are in, which is £384 a day across the same 167 days. That is the same person at the same cost, without the commitment.
You have never checked whether your assumption was right
Every rate rests on a guess about how much of your week is billable, and almost nobody measures it afterwards. Chapter five covers how, including why you add the days and divide once rather than averaging monthly percentages, which weights a short month the same as a long one.
FACTS
Where the 167 days come from
261 weekdays in the year, less 28 days of holiday at the statutory minimum, less five days assumed sick, less 61 days of selling, admin, invoicing and learning. That leaves 167, which is 64 per cent utilisation and a healthy freelance year rather than a pessimistic one. The 61 non-billable days are not waste. They are how the next engagement arrives.
8 chapters
Four tables
£22,892
The cost of dividing by 260
FACTS
Fixed price is where the money is, and where it goes
A day rate sells time and the client carries any overrun. A fixed price sells an outcome and you do, which is why getting faster stops being a pay cut and starts being a raise. It is also where experienced freelancers lose most, because an undefined scope has no ceiling. Say how many rounds of revisions are included and what another one costs, in writing, before the work starts.