Just realized I was charging by the hour for a job that should have been a flat rate

I spent 12 hours last week on a website copy job for a client in Portland. They kept asking for tiny changes, so I kept tracking my time. When I sent the invoice for $600, they got really quiet. A friend told me I should have quoted a fixed price for the whole project, maybe $400, and included two rounds of edits. Now I feel like I overcharged for what they got. How do you decide when to switch from hourly to project pricing?

3 comments

3 Comments

troyjackson3mo agoMost Upvoted

My buddy had the same issue with a logo design. He switched to flat rates after a client nitpicked for weeks on an hourly clock. Now he builds two revisions into the price and charges extra for more changes.

hunt.rowan3mo ago

Yeah, the "nitpicked for weeks on an hourly clock" thing is so real. A friend of mine did website copy for a flat fee, and the client kept asking for tiny word swaps daily for over a month. It was stuff like changing "innovative" to "groundbreaking" and then back again. She felt totally stuck because the project was technically still open. Now she does exactly what your buddy does, a set number of changes baked right into the first price.

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karenw9018d ago

The "groundbreaking" to "innovative" thing actually made me pause. I mean, I know a lot of freelancers who do revision caps, but building them into the initial price can backfire too. I once quoted a flat fee with two revisions for a small biz logo, and they used up both on day one then ghosted me for a week before asking for more changes. Maybe it's just me but I think you need a separate revision add-on price, not just lumped into the project total. Otherwise you end up doing free work when they come back with "one tiny last thing" after the cap is done.