When submitting a quote for a project, most freelancers
tend to quote a flat fee for the project versus billing by
the hour. Most clients also prefer paying a flat fee,
however, a lot of clients will ask you what your hourly
rate is, which is a fair question.

Although it’s fine to tell them your hourly rate once,
shift the focus away from hours in follow up conversations.
Here’s something you can do before quoting to make it
easier on yourself if a client comes back to you with
questions about your pricing…

Simply price your services based on your “day rate” so that
when quoting a project, you can easily equate the quoted
figure to a full-day or half-day chunk of time.

For example, say a client asks you to quote on writing a
2-page case study. For the sake of easy math, assume your
hourly rate is $100.

You know (or you guess) that this will be no more than a
two-day project, so you quote it at $1,600. (2 days x 8 hrs
per day x $100 per hour)

If your client then comes back with a question about how
you arrived at your price, you can say, “Well, a case study
isn’t something I can get in and out of in one day. It’s
more like two days worth of work which, at my day rate of
$800, is $1,600.”

Notice how this rationale actually sounds more believable
when compared to, “Well, I estimate 16 hrs worth of
writing.” When you say “16 hours” it sounds more like
you’re taking a wild guess! Why 16 hours? Why not 17, 15,
or 14.5?

By simply changing the unit of measurement to “day” rather
than “hour”, you actually sound more reasonable, and
therefore you give your client less reason to argue with
your rationale.

KNOWING YOUR DAY RATE SAVES QUOTING TIME
Quoting by the day, or half-day, also saves you time and
prevents you from wondering what to charge for
smaller-ticket projects. Say a client calls you for a quote
on writing a press release. You get all the information and
then you tell the client you’ll get back to them with a
quote. But what ends up happening? You hang up the phone
and spend the next 30 minutes putting a quote together and
going back and forth in you mind on whether you should
charge $300 or $500.

On the other hand, if you know your half-day rate works out
to $400, why not just quote $400. In fact, you could save
yourself 30 minutes of quote-prep time by giving a verbal
quote right on the phone. You could say, “A press release
like the one you just described is a about a half-day worth
of work, which is $400.”

Said confidently, that communicates to the client that you
know exactly what you’re talking about, and goes a long way
to impress her.

DAY RATES HELP COMMUNICATE ADDITIONAL FEES
The “day” or “half day” chunk also works well in the more
rare scenario where the scope of a project changes after
you’ve already begun, and you feel justified in going back
to ask for more money.

In this scenario, it’s easier to say, “These major changes
to the project scope will mean an extra day’s worth of
work, which is $800.” Compare this to saying, “This is
about 8 hours of extra work,” which somehow makes you sound
like you’re sitting there with a stopwatch in your hand
looking for an opportunity to nickel-and-dime the client.

Bottom line… clients hate the notion of “paying by the
hour” so remove this language from your conversations, and

^ Back to Top