Showerthought: billing by the hour actually punishes speed

I just did my first freelance web design gig for a local bakery in Austin, and I spent like 2 hours on what I thought would take 6. I was so proud until I realized I made less money per project than if I had dragged it out. Then I read this blog post from a designer who broke down how she switched to flat rates and tripled her income over 6 months. It totally clicked for me that hourly billing rewards slowness, not skill. Has anyone else tried switching to project-based pricing for their first few gigs?

3 comments

3 Comments

parker_hall55d ago

@knight.uma nailed it about the checkout flow thing. The real kicker with hourly billing nobody talks about is how it makes clients suspicious when you work fast. I had the bakery owner literally ask if I "skipped something" because I finished early. With a flat rate, that worry goes away and they just see you delivered ahead of schedule. Plus there's this weird trap where you start second-guessing your own speed like "wait, did I miss something?" instead of trusting your skill. I switched to fixed pricing on my third client and never looked back because it finally made being good at my job actually pay off.

knight.uma5d ago

Billing by the hour punishes speed - that only works if you're churning out the same work faster" - I get the point you're making, but actually I think it still punishes speed even for complex stuff. Like when I did that bakery site, the hardest part was figuring out their checkout flow. I solved it in 20 minutes because I'd dealt with a similar problem before, but with hourly billing I got paid way less than if I'd spent two days struggling. The speed comes from knowing your stuff, not just banging out cookie-cutter work. So you're right that the value is in the problem-solving, but the hourly model still makes that value cheaper for clients, which is backwards.

abbyf795d ago

Billing by the hour actually punishes speed" - that only works if you're churning out the same work faster, not if you're doing complex stuff where speed means you're just better at solving problems nobody else can.