Freelance Billing Models

How to convince clients to charge by the project instead of hours ?

Rather than charging per hour start charging per day. Your client will get the output of a day's worth of work that will include your necessary breaks. That should make it easier for you.

It’s been said numerous time here on HN and elsewhere (read patio11’s kalzumeus.com) but just to repeat what others and myself have found to work best: dont charge per hour. Charge per day/week or month.Your goal is to work efficiently and fast. When you do this, it means you get to make more money for less time and the client gets the benefit of getting work done faster.

Consider charging a day rate. Only you know how many hours it takes you to do a 'day' of work.

There is a difference between cost and value. The client valued your ability to solve their problem as equal to your daily rate. It shouldn't matter if it took you 1 hour or 8 hours, they are paying for a result, not for you to punch a clock.

thanks. that's a good point about clients not valuing time as much when its not hourly.

I am doing hourly work. But this is for clients I have high level of trust. They believe me.Most other clients are more concerned to know fixed amount of time and if project took less - they want to get it back, although I negotiate that successfully so far =)The worst case is - estimate in hours. =)

When I was being payed by hour, I billed only effective work hours.I was pushing myself to do 6 effective work hours a day, which was not always easy (some days I would work throughout the whole day just to accomplish those 6 effective hours).I was tracking procrastination / break / meal time initially in 5-min and later in 15-min intervals. That was kind of extreme and my friends did not understand why I was being so honest or felt guilty otherwise. In hindsight, they were right

Your interests are not aligned with your clients when you bill hourly. It is in your interests to work slowly, spreading the work over as many hours as possible. It is against your interests to invest in time-saving techniques and tools, because they will ultimately reduce your take-home pay.What you do is, quote your client an estimated time to completion for your project in (in order of preference) weeks, days, (or only if required) hours. You have a minimum increment, which could be a week

By the hour. I know I should bill by the day or week, but I think then clients will expect me to work a full working day, i.e. 8 hours.This way, I don't feel like I'm ripping my clients off if I'm working only 2 hours today, or diluting my rate too much if I manage to work 12 hours tomorrow. I really enjoy this freedom.