Desing Freelance Rate
A lot of design web design companies, and Millennium Rise is not an exception here, might face the need to employ a freelancer or a group of freelancers when the workload gets too big to be handled with internal resources. When employing a person, such companies define the design freelance rate themselves, so that the freelancers can only accept it or deny it. It can be, depending on the type of a project or on the intended cooperation principle, a fixed monthly payment, an hourly rate or a pay for a particular amount of work done. The company defines the design freelance rate taking into consideration a number of different factors, and this is quite a complicated process, however how could you, being a freelancer, determine how much to charge your potential customers for a certain project? There are some rules, or rather guidelines, to be followed in this case:
- calculate costs. Try to determine your yearly expenses. This is not too difficult in case you’ve been working as a freelancer for several years already, just look back and count. In case you’re a beginner, this task will take some planning, however remember to be realistic, take into account both your desires and abilities and find a compromise. Remember that the supply is quite high, and you need to stand the competition. Both overall costs and labor costs are to be included. Try to estimate how much profit you can gain getting a particular design freelance rate, so that it covers your bills and makes the whole endeavor benefitial.
- determine billable hours. It would be unreasonable to think that you can work 16 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year, putting all your efforts into successful realization of interesting web design projects, even if you’re energetic enough to work 16 hours straight once in a while. Calculating the real time you can spend on working, take into account the time needed for searching and marketing projects, holidays, vacations, sick leaves etc. Your design freelance rate should cover the time which you spend on working, not living.
- define the breakeven point. This is not that hard in case you’ve managed to do the previous two tasks successfully. Your breakeven design freelance rate is calculated by dividing the total expenses by the total number of billable hours – the obtained sum will be the the minimum pay you should charge per hour, for your business not to become lossmaking.
- estimate the profit. You don’t want to work for nothing, just covering your expenses, right? This is why you should add to your design freelance rate a certain amount so that the business becomes profitable. Be realistic, though, doubling the sum would probably look attractive for you, however such a rate will not stand any competition. Specialists estimate a realistic profit to be around 10-20%.
- compare with others. Let’s assume you’ve successfully calculated your own design freelance rate as a certain hourly amount. Now it’s advisable to compare this figure with what other freelancers charge or what the companies using freelance work offer. Remember some of the companies might offer less that they’re in fact ready to pay, in the hope that you might agree, and the rate range among freelancers is huge – be sure you compare to those with whom you have similar skills.
- remain competitive. Comparing your design freelance rate to those of other freelancers you may come to a conclusion that you want too much. In this case, in order to stay competitive, it might be a good idea to lower the rate a little bit, to equalize it with the general offer. Remember not to sink below the breakeven point, though.