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TIL my project rates were killing my take-home pay
I looked at my books from January to now and saw I was making about $35 an hour on a flat project rate, but after switching to a day rate last month for a similar scope, that jumped to over $60. The difference was all the little extra calls and revisions that weren't in the original quote. How do you guys price to make sure you're actually getting paid for your time?
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anna7176mo ago
Wow, that's a brutal lesson. I always bake a "pain in the neck" buffer into my flat rates now for exactly that stuff.
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the_leo6mo ago
That "pain in the neck" buffer idea is why I finally switched to flat rates too.
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casey3426mo ago
My last project had a 20% buffer and I still ended up working extra hours for free. That's exactly what @anna717 is talking about. You have to guess how much of a pain the client will be, and I always guess wrong. Now my flat rate is just higher across the board, no separate line item. It saves the awkward talk about why the buffer got used up. Do you find clients push back less when the rate is just one solid number?
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