When we stop to think about it, we have a feeling most designers out there hit Google before each and every project, to look for the standard rates they should be using during a project. We understand this all too well, and if you’re new to the industry, you may find yourself without even a roadmap on how to charge your clients. If that sounds familiar, don’t despair! We’ve got a guide ready below to illustrate a few of the most basic payment schedules and plans designers use for their projects.
- The Dreaded Hourly Rate: It’s almost always a good idea to charge your client by the hour. Make sure to give the client an accurate estimate of how long it will take you to do a project and also ensure that you won’t be left with not enough dough in the oven to last through your overtime. Standard hourly rates range from $25 to as much as $400, at the really big firms. However, most fall somewhere around the $35 mark for freelancers. It’s a good starting pay rate, and as your clientelle grows, you may find you can bump up your rate without any loss in revenue.
- By Project: In the past, we’ve created advertisements for clients on a one-off basis. For these, we typically just charge a lump sum based around the hours we’d planned to spend working on them. This is a fantastic way to charge clients for simple or single-item design projects if you’re unsure about other methods. Just take a quick minute to guess how many hours it will take to complete, then multiply the time spent by your hourly rate. There’s your lump sum, ready to roll!
- By the Week: On very rare occasions, we’ve also charged clients by the week. This was usually done when a full-scale rebranding was taking place, and the client wanted to invest so much per-week into the effort. As such, we typically worked only as many hours a week as our hourly rate could cover with the weekly stipend. This is a good idea for very large projects, or ones with extensive scopes leading into several months down the road.
