Daily Rates

HippySunshine

Senior Member
I am an amatuer freelancer and Im currently building up a portfolio in order to gain more experience and to maybe make more of a career out of this.

I normally charge set prices for "packages" when creating websites ofr my clients and they are usualy fairly cheap as Im no WHIZ KID EXPERT just yet.

I've been approached by a local company that are looking for freelancers to help them with projects that they have had to turn away recently dues to not having the people or time to do them and they have asked what my "daily rate" is.

Now, I dont want to over charge and loose them as I am not at expert level but aslo dont want to undercharge myself.

I know this is probably a common question and been asked before but how do you all work out your hourly or daily rates?

Im going have a search around google now but any of your info/tips would be much appreciated.

Thanks x
 
Take your desired salary for a year, work out the monthly, then weekly, then daily rates that works out at, then add a little on to that.
 
You can do all the sums you like! It comes down to how you feel in the end.

Make sure you charge a rate that you are comfortable with that justifies your experience and skills. Your first concern is that it's fair on you, not the client.

Your last worry should be putting the client off. Are you really prepared to work at a reduced rate, just so you get the job? Will it be worth putting the work in for a small amount of money?
 
I don't know if this is daft or not, but can I ask what YOU would expect my daily rate to be looking at what work I have so far etc.

I really don't know what I should be charging as I really dont want to under/over charge.
Im not sure what im comfortable with charging as a daily rate.
Am I looking between £80/£90 ??
 
Where did you get £80 from :)

I'd say £80 is a good daily rate for an "external" employee (freelancer etc.)

That works out at around £19200 for 48 weeks @ 5 days / week

With your self proclaimed lack of experience thats a large wage, but then they are paying you differently to a direct employee (as a junior designer, without much skill in html, from what I've seen your looking at anything between 14-20k)

So I think 80-90 is perfect :)

Irrelevant of your level of work, if they are willing to hire you, they like your work :)
 
lol, I love that calculator, somehow it works out that I need to charge £150 an HOUR. Not sure why as I'm fine on my current hourly rate (which is fair bit lower I might add)
 
The hourly calculator's fine :p what you put into it isn't ;)

On a 6 hour charging day, 240 day year thats like 216,000 / year
 
10 hour day, 5 days a week, 2 weeks off, 5k personal profit plus basic expenses, mortgage and hardware/software costs - according to my sums thats 375k a year, lol

Obviously thats working $ as £ so even if you change the $ into £'s using the 2/3 currency conversion that's still 240k plus lol

I better go change my billing rates if that says I need to charge that lol
 
Calculated mine correct. 44k would cover my current ideal lifestyle... if I reached that obviously my ideal would change ...

charging for 6 hours / day (working 10) ... 230 days / year
I'd need to charge £34.30 / hour

Which would be nice
 
oops it was me, I read a question wrong and it was I put 10% thinking it was after hours, my original quote was for me working 1 hour a day lol

I think I'll stick with my current rate, the (new) suggested rate per hour is £16 per hour which is lower than I charge lol.
 
OK...if I was a business looking for freelancer...( oops! I am ) .....
And I'm as tight as ducks ar*se. ( oops I am ).....
And I'm looking for talent that I can make a profit on ( oops! I am)......
..... What make me smile, and Hippy have pound in the pocket?/????
Answer.........£10-£15 an hour.
That's life, it may not be fair but it's real. Deal with it.
People overvalue their own worth and services. That's why they wait for the phone to ring.
Levi will survive because he is reallistic - whether it's fair is subjective. This is a capitalistic society we live in. Here is your early morning wake up call. Good Luck
 
Yeah I'm realistic, 15quid an hour is undervaluing my type of work, people regularly charge £50+ an hour in the CAD field where as unless you're Harryesque charging that for web design could be seen as overvaluing your skills, it is round this way with people offering to do (rubbish) 10 page sites from 50 quid

My prices also take into account I know I won't be working 5 days a week every week and also the fact that I will not be able to do any other work while I'm rendering (that's the making pretty pictures bit) for example. But it's very rare that I charge per hour, I normally give a job rate so both parties know how much the job will cost.
 
Berry :p while invaluable advice, you've actually just backed up the amount she was thinking (£80-90 / day is around £10-12 /hour)

My figure was just what I would love to charge, not what I'd expect. And Levi's what he would need to charge to "live" according to the calculator, yet he charges more because he can / needs to due to not always having work...
 
Ooo wait, berry doesn't work for less than 27 hours in a day, 7 days a week, so he thinks you should be charging more ;)
 
Back
Top