In freelancing the client is king, catering to specific needs and requests is something any good freelancer should learn to do. Many, if not all clients will want to know how much your services will cost them before the beginning of an actual project. This preliminary estimate of a project’s cost is called “quoting” or having a sales quote. Needless to say, the expectations set by this quote will be a deciding factor in how well your work goes.
Price it too low and you might not be getting what you’re worth, price it too high and you might lose out on some freelance proposals. Quoting can be tricky – here are five steps that will set you on the path of doing it right.
1. “Discovery sheet”
The first and most important part of quoting is determining how much the client can pay and how much he or she is willing to pay. Some freelancers use a very interesting method that can lead to great results. It is called a “discovery sheet”. Most clients will be unwilling to just straight out tell you their budget if you ask them, but a professionally looking document can often squeeze out some information. Ask them about their goals, timeframe, expectations and how much they plan to put aside for the project. Even if you don’t get a final number, knowing their thoughts on these matters can help you determine the importance of the project and thus its price.
2. Market awareness
The relationship between freelancers and businesses does not exist in a vacuum, it is important to know your market value when estimating your quote. Check out what other freelancers charge, compare your experience to theirs and adjust accordingly. You don’t want to go much below the average, but being above it can and will in some cases lead to the company finding another freelancer to do the job for less.
3. Pricing Milestones
Milestones are something that aspiring freelancers tend to overlook at the beginning. You do your job, get paid at the end and everyone is happy right? Unfortunately, reality can be a bit harsher than that. In order to not risk wasting your time and doing parts of a project for free, make sure to set milestones. Many freelancers charge up front, which shows their confidence in the work they provide and can be a reassurance that both sides get what they bargained for. A typical up-front percentage ranges from 33% to 50%. You can also have additional milestones for, say, half or a third of the job’s completion.
4. The 10-20 percent buffer
Often when drafting up a quote, freelancers tend to assume the “best case scenario”. This keeps the quote attractively low. However, a lot of things can go wrong on a project, like the client changing their mind, responding too slowly to your questions and just generally making work slower for whatever reason. Therefore it is a good idea to have a so-called buffer of 10%-20%, assuming that everything does not turn out to be as smooth as butter and you have to put in more time than initially planned.
5. Track your time
Tracking your time, especially on your first couple of projects can be extremely beneficial. Often, we don’t realize how many hours we actually spend on a project and think small tasks like writing emails or answering them are negligible when time is concerned. These things add up though. A project that takes 50 hours of pure work might actually imply 70 hours of you toiling away. There are a lot of great free software solutions online, like Klok and RescueTime which will help you track work time and determine your quote better as a result.
Have you already sent quotes to your clients? Do you find these tips helpful? Let us know and share any other ideas in the comment section below.
Pic: © iQoncept_shutterstock
