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One of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt as a freelance designer and photographer, is how much should I charge for my work?
Years ago, I innocently asked another photographer if £25 per hour was an appropriate rate to charge. It isn’t, and I know that now, but I received quite an insulting reply along the lines of “you’re undermining a whole industry and should take a hard look at yourself”. Cutting through it, the reply was right albeit a bit blunt. Jump forwards to 2018 when I started taking on freelance work and I thought £45 per hour seemed about right.
For the most part it was, and it served as a good starting place. Clients were happy to pay it and I felt like I was being genuine. That worked fairly nicely until one client asked me to sign over my IP to everything I created for them. That’s fair enough but the hourly rate had to reflect this, so we negotiated a new retainer. Once again, I felt happy that I was charging appropriately for the work I was delivering, and I was earning good money.
Naturally that client started to wind down how much they were using me as their business model changed direction but thankfully I picked up a handful of new clients. Then the conversations of rates started to surface again. I stumbled across this amazing video some time ago of a talk by Chris Do and it made me realise that charging for any creative work needs to consider three things. How long will it take me to complete the deliverable the client is asking me to do? How much do they stand to gain from this deliverable? How much of my experience are they benefitting from to achieve this?
Only one of those aspects can be measured with time so hourly rates are only part of the picture. Some would argue that a high hourly rate takes the other two aspects into account, but it’s just not as simple as that. This morning I have designed a press advert for an independent consultant going in a small local title. Their budget is not the same as a large VC funded enterprise, nor do they stand to gain anywhere near as much from that creative.
Conversely, late last week I had a photoshoot with another client that required fast turn around of a variety of assets for products that cost 5-6 figures. This client benefitted from twenty years of Photoshop experience on that job, and as such, their invoice reflected that accordingly.
Charging, and quoting, for any work is a dark art, and frankly a bit finger in the air. Sometimes you’ll get it right, and sometimes you really won’t. For anyone starting out reading this, I urge you not to worry about charging a low rate to ensure you get the work, it doesn’t help you in the long run and ultimately you’ll end up backing yourself into a corner that’s hard to get out of.
Nowadays, I consider the hours that the job is going to take me and base that on £50 per hour, then I think about those other aspects and adjust accordingly. I will add or subtract from that estimate until I get to a final figure that feels right for the scale of the job that I’ve been asked to do. My point is, don’t be afraid to charge appropriately for the work you are doing – you deserve to earn it.