What do I charge?

How to think about pricing your contracting services

Congratulations, a client wants to hire you! After writing up your first proposal you get to the most important question: what do I charge? This is a critical part of the proposal. Ask for too much and your client may shelve the project or go with someone cheaper. Ask for too little and you feel like a sucker, especially when the scope gets bigger. Luckily, there’s a better approach to pricing where you don’t have to agonize over rates or try to come up with a number that captures the value of your time.

As a contractor, you know that a slightly lower fee is better than not getting the job at all. A client emails you about creating a social media strategy for a new product launch. Using AskFora to create a job proposal, you can capture the key skill set, the job description, requirements and deliverable. These are all important factors in getting the job done but only one of them matters when it comes to pricing: the deliverable.

Your time is worth more than that, especially if you’re putting in 60 hour weeks.

Your social media strategy is going to take a month of full time work to develop, and the client has a budget of $3,000. This is where you throw your hands in the air, exasperated because you did the math, and there’s no way you’d work for so little. Your time is worth more than that, especially if you’re putting in 60 hour weeks. Or maybe you’re thinking about this all wrong.