Do you charge more?

Pixels Ink

Pixels Ink

Member
If a client comes to you and needs a job done urgently, do you charge more if it means you have to push other work back to do it, or do you just charge your normal rates?
 
Deffo more, all the extra stress/pressure it gives warrants a small premium in my opinion. Whether I make them aware of this slight increase depends, if it is VERY urgent and by fitting them in is doing the client a BIG favour then more often or not I will say and they are usually happy to pay.
 
Good to know. At the moment I don't, but in the past few weeks its become a nightmare with clients coming at me with last minute jobs that need to be delivered before Christmas. Like you say, all the pressure this generates on other jobs should surely come at a premium.

Definitely looking into this now for future rush jobs.
 
What I have found (especially with 1 or 2 clients), is if you keep on doing things last minute for them at no extra cost then they get complacent (think that's the word) and then ALWAYS leave things until the last minute as they know you will help out.

As you know this causes loads of extra stress/pressure, especially over the past few weeks which have been VERY busy, hence I charge a small premium to cover this now. The ones not happy to pay now place orders well in advance and the ones happy to pay carry on as normal, but at least I am compensated for this now.
 
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This is interesting. I generally don't charge more, but have done on the odd occasion when the request was unreasonable but 'do-able'.

It's difficult now with work being more scarce as you certainly don't want to lose a client by handling it the wrong way! There are too many designers out there as we all know!
 
I don't think you would lose a client, most clients are completely understanding that if they make a request thats pushing timescales etc they may get charged more for it, its just that I don't charge more and wondered how normal it was in the industry to do so :)

Pretty sure if I said to any of my clients that i'd have to charge x% extra that they wouldn't throw a strop and say they will never use me again :) and if it was a new client, they wouldn't know I was charging more than normal and if they didn't want to pay extra then I just wouldn't do the work.

As for work being scarce, that certainly hasn't hit me yet. I'm busier than ever, and thats with me putting up my rates!
 
Having not been in the business very long, I've not had an abundance of clients and no rush jobs yet.

However, should someone need a job doing in a very small time scale then I would definitely charge more, for reasons stated Damon has stated. I also agree with Paul as losing a client over over pricing (if you get me) is hard to take when work is scarce, but you learn with experience what prices to set.

I definitely think you should charge a premium for small time scale work Pixels.
 
I'm not saying charge a premium for small time scale work. I'm saying charge a premium for rush work that will mean jobs you are currently working on have to be held back in order to complete the rush job :)

Also, you would not be over charging your client, you would be charging a premium for advancing their job over another. This is something I think a client should be willing to pay extra for if it is a rush, otherwise their job would just have to be slotted into the next vacant job slot :)
 
Well, personally I would charge more whether it pushes back other work or not. If they're going for a small turnaround which is quite obviously a bit of a squeeze then they should expect to pay more and you should get paid more for doing it in that timescale.

Just my view.
 
Ah, I get ya. Sorry I misread what you posted. Yeah, if they want what is usually a 6 hour job completed in 3 hours, then of course, that's a premium as I'll have to do the work outside of normal hours to get it done on time.
 
I try not to, but sometimes meeting the deadline would be almost impossible without me having to ditch other projects. Rush fees are quite common in the industry.
 
Boss Hog said:
What I have found (especially with 1 or 2 clients), is if you keep on doing things last minute for them at no extra cost then they get complacent (think that's the word) and then ALWAYS leave things until the last minute as they know you will help out.
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Good point Boss, this does happen to me but I don't charge more but maybe I should think about doing that, give myself the break to think about it me thinks!
 
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