Core77

So, how much are you worth?

We're not talking in a philosophical, meaning-of-life sort of way, but the much harder, more immediate sort of worth: cash money, and your first client has just asked how much of it you want for an hour of your creative time. For anyone new to creative freelancing, picking a rate can feel nearly as tenuous as selecting a "card, any card" from a deck fanned out on a magician's table, but there does turn out to be some logic to it.

Over at Creative Seeds, Carl Alviani has a rundown of six things the remember when focusing in on that magic number; here's #5:

An hour worked is not an hour billed.

You only get to bill your client for time spent producing deliverables for them: the renderings, the prototypes, the presentations, the sketches, the research reports. One thing young freelancers are often astonished to discover is how, at the end of a long hard day, they've only generated 4 hours worth of work for their client.

It's a discouraging realization, but really it shouldn't be; that's just how freelancing works (it's how staff jobs usually work too, if we're ruthlessly honest in our accounting). There's time spent marketing yourself, time spent learning new skills, and time spent recovering from mistakes. There's also time spent on the phone with a professional acquaintance, reading blogs and sites relevant to your field, and responding to emails from potential future clients. This stuff is necessary too, but it's not billable. In fact, a good rule of thumb is that for every hour you bill, you'll be working for two. Once this settles in, five hours entered into a timesheet on Monday doesn't look so bad.

>>Read the whole article here.<<

photo credit: zoomar