How to Negotiate Per Project Rates as a Freelance Writer | How to Negotiate Freelance Writing Rates
Did you start out working hourly, too? Or do you still work hourly and you're starting to feel like you're missing out on bigger profits? When I made the switch to per project pricing over hourly pricing, I finally realized a major idea: why would I want to get paid less for my work as I got better and faster?
And! When clients see a crazy-high hourly rate and are unsure about how many hours it'll take you to finish a project vs. a perfectly-budgeted project rate, it does things to their mind…
Like melt it and bring up money anxiety. So in this week's livestream, we're going over how to negotiate per project rates over hourly, how to explain per project benefits over hourly to your clients, why per project is better for your freelance writer billing, and what to do if your client won't budge and insists you work hourly.
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How to Negotiate Per Project Rates as a Freelance Writer AKA How to Negotiate Freelance Writing Rates
why would I want to get paid less as I got better and faster at my work? That's the whole concept of today's episode. That's what we're talking about. And really what that means is how to negotiate your rates as a freelance writer, and also how to negotiate per project rates over hour. This is a really important concept.
This is why I switched from hourly to per project and how I kind of changed my mindset coming from a full-time job where things were hourly. Um, and it was like this mix between hourly and salary and all this weird stuff because Hey Baz, no welcome in. Because when you work on government projects, you know, that's how it is, is it's billed by the hour.
And there's all this weird stuff that happens. Um, and then there's things where, um, sometimes you work hourly, which calculates out to salary so they can track like what your schedule's like with all this weird stuff. Greetings, welcome. So that's what we're talking about today is how to kind of negotiate your rates and how to switch from per or from hourly to per project.
So that. You are not getting paid less as you get better and faster. So, this is another good thing too, that I wanna mention. This is something that I go over a lot in my pricing guide, my free pricing guide, which Vesna, and was talking about this morning, Vesna. I did see your comment in the wealth lab community.
So yes. So if you go to Mandy ellis.com/pricing guide, you could get my brand new updated, free pricing guide. I did a huge, massive update on it, and you can get it here for free mandy.com/pricing guide. And in there I go over. Even more in detail than we're going to now this, Hey, Hey Vicky. I always love the wave.
I always love the wave. Um, so when we're kind of talking about this stuff, there's a few things that we want to go over. So when we're kind of going through our things, like, how do we actually negotiate this? Like how do we actually negotiate per project over hourly? So let's just kind of start with some ran, like not random, but some foundational.
So when you're working hourly, you have to track everything that you do. So what ends up happening is that sometimes you forget, or sometimes you leave the timer on or there's all these mistakes that can happen. So that's number one. And then you end up getting, giving your client an inaccurate invoice.
Number two, it's really hard for your clients to budget when you work hourly. So what ends up happening is your clients end up getting like surprise invoices sometimes and you know, they, they expect it. Oh, well I think it'll take her five hours or I think it'll take, you know, 10 hours or three hours and it takes you some other number.
That's not that right. They expect three hours. It takes you seven hours. And then they get a surprise invoice. And that was something that I never liked about, um, doing hourly as a freelance writer. And then there's times where your clients are like, okay, we'll just agree that you get a max of 10 hours.
So basically what they're saying is like, if it takes you seven, we're gonna pay less. It's all about time instead of quality of work or what they're actually getting, which is a big, a big pain in the butt. And I've had times where people are like, yeah, you sh we'll just give you 10 hours or we'll give you however many hours per.
Um, and you know, that'll be our budgeting. I'm like, then why don't you just pay me that? Why are you budgeting like that? Why are you budgeting? Like just, you know, if you already are saying 10 hours a week and that's your budget, why don't we just do that? , you know, to me that makes zero sense. Even if I send them a per project invoice, let's say, um, for 10 hours a week, it was a thousand dollars or whatever.
Um, You digging around, um, let's just say it was a thousand dollars. They already know that invoice for that week. Or let's say for two weeks it would be $2,000. They already know it's gonna be $2,000. Why do I have to do this hourly thing? And if they know that they're gonna budget it hourly and they're gonna cap it at a certain amount, why don't I just give them the invoice for that?
And then we all know the hours are 10 hours. Like to me, that just seems like weird semantics and strange stuff that I don't wanna deal with. So. There's all these different, like slicey dicey things, um, that happen when you end up working hourly versus per project. And then there's all these strange things where like people try to save money or, um, they just were, they're like nervous about what you don't sit on her.
Oh my gosh. Why do you have to sit on her? There's all these weird things that happen where they're like, oh, well, if you work less, I don't wanna pay as much. I've had that conversation multiple times with potential clients where I'm like, yeah, can you tell me, you know, walk me through why you, you know, hour, why you want hourly instead of per project.
They're like, yeah. Cuz if it takes you less time, I'll pay less money. Like they straight up said that and I'm like, Okay, so you don't care like the it's like that thing where they want the best quality, right. At the lowest price, which is not really how it works. And then they wanna like slice and dice all these things.
They wanna nickel and dime the situation of how you work and how you put things together. Do you wanna blanket buddy? Sometimes we have a lot of intensive raking over here. Oops. Here we. Oh, we're settled. We're settled. So sometimes we have a lot of intensive raking because I didn't put a blanket over there cuz like they, they like to have sheets and pillows and blankets to like rake around.
And sometimes before we, we get settled over in our little ho hole over here. Oh my gosh. You guys are both on camera. I can't believe it. We did it. We've won. All right. Everybody gets a trio. Oh, I dropped one free for all. All right. All right, buddy. Ready? Can you catch it? 1, 2, 3 dog. So close. Good job. That was only a half treat.
You want another one MI? Yeah, we'll save till later. We'll save that for later. You wanna show everybody your high five skills? High five. Good job. Other one. Good job. All right. Where'd that other one go now I lost a trio. Oh, oh, here it is. Ready buddy. 1, 2, 3 dog. So close. So close buddy. So close. All right.
Ooh, gross. I just got dog drill all over my computer. No, uh, I don't know why I'm freaking out. It's not like the first time that's happened. All right. Vicky says I'm gonna pop Vicky's comment up here. I just got it. And have yet to look at over oath. Is that Firefox? Are we talking about something else? Um, oh yeah, the pricing guide.
If you already are on the email list and you didn't get it on Monday, the new pricing guide, let me know, just send me an email. So Vicky, if you didn't get it just, um, email me, Vicky says hourly is the client communicating that you should take as few hours as possible to save the money so you can't complete work.
You're proud of that is a really good way to say it. I am glad you said that. because this is the problem is like when you get into these strange hourly arrangements, you end up stressing over how much time it takes you. You end up imagining and guessing what your client's thinking. So you're like, oh my gosh, my client thinks it should be seven hours when I'm already taken 10.
And you have no idea what they're thinking. Your client may not have any idea how long it should take, and you have to wait till you get feedback on the surprise invoice that you're sending. So then there's this weird thing where you're trying to do your best work in the littlest amount of time as possible, because you're scared and worried and fearful and anxious that your client's gonna chop your head off, right.
That your client's gonna be like, I can't believe you. It took you this long to do this work when the principal is, I can believe you got this quality of work in this little amount of time. Right. This is the, the, the switch that I think freelance writers need to make. It's not about time. And this for me was a really important thing because when I was kind of coming up and I was kind of doing, um, I started on Upwork, which I don't recommend.
So on Upwork, right. You're charging hourly. And I told this story recently. So I think at the time on Upwork, I was charging $50 an. And I ha I had a, a potential client on upward come to me and be like, that's nice, but will you do it for $12 an hour? And I was like, sure, sounds good. I need the work. So I cut my rate to get this client right.
Cause it they're like, oh, well, you know, we don't care how many hours it takes, but you have to work at $12 an hour. Right. Like, this is the mindset where you're like, oh, well, okay. Maybe I'll just make more money at $12 an hour than I will at 50, because I'll work more like, no, no. And just as like a little aside here, I am not fast.
Like I have never really been fast. Um, it takes me a while to put everything together. Like I'm faster now. So the comparison that I give now is that when I first started out, it took me a whole month to do my first reported article, to get my sources, to write it, to edit it, to organize it, to like, get everything together.
It took me a month and now if I really wanted to, I could get like 20 reported articles done in a month, but I like kind of like in the five to 10 range, more like four, like I like it one a week is kind of what I like to do. Um, but that's kind of the schedule change. And if I was doing it hourly, that first article I wrote would've been a disaster.
It would've been like a billion dollars. . Um, and that's the thing is like, I think that this idea of getting faster and better over time, why would I get penalized for that? That's insanity, right? You wanna be better and faster. You want to be able to work on either more projects or less projects that are higher paid.
You wanna have your schedule back. You don't wanna just keep grinding away for years after years after years and not making more money or like not having any time off or being tired, all the. Like, that's just crazy to me. Um, the idea that you do per project is you're like this thing costs $5,000. Does that work within your budget?
Do oh, it does. Sounds good. Now there's no magic. There's they know that $5,000 is due on X date. It's all in the invoice, right? There's no, there's no thing to worry about. There's no submit 800 invoices. It's one invoice. And at the worst case scenario, it's 50% upfront, 50%, 30 days later, or 50%, 45 days later, or 50% due at the end, when you turn in all the work, right?
Worst case scenario, they know the payment schedule, they know what they can budget for. That's good for everybody. Now, I don't have to worry about how much time or, or hours it takes for my client. For me to get this work done. I certainly can care how long it takes me to get this work done because I wanna get better and faster because I don't want it to take me a month.
Every time I do a reported article. But the thing is, is the better, faster part is benefiting you. Right? That's benefiting you long term. It's benefiting your project. And your client layout and delivering better work for your clients, cuz you don't have to worry about all these ancillary things. So for me, when I'm kind of thinking about negotiating that let's talk about number one here, I'm gonna put up number one, that's kind of like my, my beginning entry level, um, like info on moving from hourly to per project.
1) How to Negotiate Per Project Freelance Writing Rates Over Hourly
So let's talk about number one. How do we actually negotiate this over hourly? There's a few things that I say. Two hourly clients. So let me take a drink and I'll tell you,
I always feel weird, like drinking water on camera, but then I feel weird getting off camera to drink water . So number one, here is how do we actually negotiate it? So there's a few things. The first thing I always say. Is that I work per project because you already know what to budget for, which is what I've already said.
So I will tell my client, like tell my client that. Yeah. So we've already agreed on a scope of work. And now that we agreed that this price, this per project price, right. $5,000 fits within your budget. And I feel like it's fair and valuable price for the work. Now, all we do is sign a contract. We know exactly how that works.
Not only does it give you exactly what your budget is, right? Like it tells you, uh, that you don't need to have surprise invoices. There's no weird stuff that crops up, you know, that the work that you're getting in the scope of work is $5,000. There's no change. So number one, It's you know, budget friendly.
Number two, there's no surprise invoices. Number three, you don't have to worry about managing me. You don't have to worry about what I'm doing when, or you don't have to worry about like, if I'm going over hours or if I'm getting, you know, spending more money. There's no weird management, stuff like that.
Um, the other thing is that as you move from hourly to per project, it's just easier to get the flow of things done. There's not so many invoices, there's not so many little ticky tacky things that we have to deal with. It's just doing the work and paying, excuse me, and paying for the work. That's it? Um, there's a lot of things that we can explain too.
hourly. Even if you give someone a crazy high rate, like this is something that I get a push back on when people are like, well, why don't you just set your rate at $200 an hour? That's why per project works. Because if I go to that client and say, my hourly rate is $200 an hour, that can be big sticker shock for them.
But $5,000 as a whole per project price makes sense to their brain. When they see it compared to the scope of work, the scope of work costs this much money. But if you tell them the scope of work is $200 an hour, and I'm not sure how many hours, and even if, I guess at the number of hours, I'm probably wrong, right.
And even if you're one hour under or one hour over, you're still wrong. um, they, there's a lot easier of a time comprehending a sticker price with a, with a scope of work, like a product, right. Versus an hourly rate that goes however many hours. So sometimes when you tell your clients, your hourly rate is $200 an hour, then they immediately wanna know how many hours is that?
Why do we have to have that conversation? Right. So if I was talking to a client, I'd be like, yeah. If I told you. you know, a, a high hourly rate. Um, you know, I, I'm not exactly sure how many hours that would take and I don't, I just don't let, I don't feel good about giving you surprise invoices or you feeling like you have to figure out, you know, how many hours I'm at all the time.
And I wanna give you high quality work in order to give you my best work per project works the best, because if it takes me longer, it doesn't cost you any extra. Um, and if it's, um, you know, the revisions are all included, however many revisions you want, you know, I will do that. And for me, that hasn't really been an issue.
I know some writers, um, that's been an issue with the number of revisions they have to do. So, you know, tailor that, um, if you need to, but for me, it's like, I just don't like the idea that, that there would be weird surprises. Like their invoice would be more than they expect, or it takes me more time than they.
Um, and I also don't like the idea that they're comparing my work to time. We all know that's not the predictor of good work that is long tested, right? Like no one went to Monet or van go or Michael Angelo or, um, Tom Clancy or Wadsworth or. Ts Elliot or any of those people, mark Twain, nobody went to these people and was like, well, how long did it take you to write huckleberry Finn?
you know, or, you know, the adventures of Tom Sawyer? Like how long did it take you to write that? Or how long did it take you to write all these poems? Right. They're not going to them and saying like, well, how long did it take you to the Sistine chapel? And because, you know, the Sistine chapel took X amount of time, which it took a long time.
but no one's saying the quality of the Sistine chapel is down because it took a long time. Like that's the crazy thing that I always think is just so bizarre is like, they want this quality of work that quality of work costs this amount of money. And regardless of how much time it takes me. So you're not going around and being like, Hey, you should take less time because we still want the same quality just in less time.
Like that's a negotiation I don't wanna be in. That's just, oops. It's like the fifth time. That's just something that I just don't wanna deal with is like the idea that quality and time, right? Like that to get a certain quality, it should take a certain time. There are lots of robots and manufacturing plants.
Hi. Woo. Woo. Can you go back to your Hubba? Go back to your ho hole. There are lots of manufacturing plants that can tout things like, oh, we do high quality stuff in a short period of time, which is fine for them cuz they're using machines and robots. Right. But as a human being, sometimes it takes me longer to do something than I think it will.
And sometimes it takes me way less time than I think it will. But that doesn't mean I should get paid less because if you compared those two pieces, right. If I showed you my work, that took me the longest and my work that took me the short. The quality wouldn't be different, right? Like that, to me, really bugs me where it's like, I don't like the idea of it.
The focus being on the time, cuz that's not really the, the factor. The quality is right. I know Annie put it, put something in here. Hey Annie. Welcome in. She says, Hey team missed you last week. But today I'm submitting my first piece of work and invoice. Yay. Good job. Maybe we could do our duck G or our goose G where is it?
Let's do it. Let's see if it'll show up. Yay. We have a little, I have this. I'm like doing this over time, but that's a big deal. So congrats, Annie. That's a big deal for my first easy peasy, inbound gig. Thanks to using Mandy's suggestions on my LinkedIn headline. Yay. That's awesome. I'm really excited about this, Annie.
That's huge. You submitted your first work in invoice and you got something as an inbound lead. That's great, Annie. Congratulations. That's a huge deal. Congratulations. That's so cool. Okay. Um, so as we're kind of negotiating these things, basically what we wanna point out is that the, um, yeah, this is another thing we wanna point out is what Vicky says.
It's none of the client's business. If I'm having a slower writing session than I normally have because of outside factors. Right? Yeah. That's exactly it. Right. So like, if it's take, if I'm tired or if I've been working a lot, or it takes me a longer period of time, that's my own personal stuff. Like the time it takes me to do something is non, not a factor.
It's if the thing is. So this is something that I think about all the time is like, is this work right? Is it the right quality? Is it the right text? Is it the, are the sentences and the words in the right order, right? Like everything is delivered at the right time. And the, like the words are at the right place at the right time to deliver the right message to whoever the reader is.
Right. That's the important. And I always think that that's weird that people wanna worry about like my writing speed. I think that's missing the whole thing. So when you're talking about these things, use what I said. Right. They can budget for it. It makes more sense, right? They don't ha there's no number one.
They can budget for it. Number two. There's no surprise invoices, number three, they don't have to worry about managing, um, managing me. I just go off and do the work and submit it. Um, number four, you know, they're gonna get the quality of work that they want because they don't have to worry about how much time, like I, they won't spend any more money than the per project invoice.
Um, and I think anytime you can slant it in your client's favor of like how this per project pricing works for them over hourly, that's the thing to do. So that's the first thing we're talking. All right. Let's pop this up. Do do, do do. Yeah. Annie, you should have a big smile on your face. That's a huge deal.
Like the first time you submit your work and the first time that, um, you submit an invoice, like that's hu that's huge. You know, it's, it's a big change, right? It's a big, um, it's a big change in like how you're running your life and like someone's paying you to write. And there's a lot of cool stuff that happens with that.
2) How to Explain the Benefits of Per Project Pricing vs. Hourly to Your Freelance Clients
So congrats. That's a big deal. All. number two. Oops. It would probably help if I didn't click all these extra buttons. All right. So we also wanna talk about benefits, right? Benefits to per project on the writer side is like now we don't have to use toggle T O G G L, which is a time tracker. We don't have to use like dub Soto has a time tracker too.
Harvest has a time tracker. There's all these different time trackers. So now. We don't have to use any time tracker tools. We just go off and actually do the work, which really should be the focus. The focus should be quality work, regardless of all this other stuff, quality work. And over time you will get faster.
Like as someone who is very, very slow snail, like I am slow. I've I've always been a slow writer. Like, um, for me, my slowness is always outweighed by. How happy I am with the quality of my work. So like, I don't really worry about the slowness anymore because I've gotten faster over time, but it's also like, I wanna be proud of the quality of my work.
I wanna be proud of the thing that I submit to my clients, regardless of how much time it is. So. As you're kind of working, you don't have to track your time anymore. Right? You don't have to be managed by somebody else. For me being a freelancer means we're a team you don't need to manage me. Um, and I like that.
I like when someone says here's, you know, let's do this project, you know, it's due on this date, goodbye. And then you just go off and do it. I really like that. I don't need someone, you know, popping in all the time, every single day or multiple times a week or every week telling me like, how many hours have you spent now?
And how many hours is this? That's just really frustrating for me. It takes away from like, they're not asking how's the piece going, is it good? You know, do you feel good about it? Like, how do you, um, how are the, did you get good quotes? That stuff matters, right? That's the actual stuff that matters, right?
The thing at the end of the road, when you submit it and when it gets published, that thing matters the time it takes to do it doesn't matter. So someone constantly checking in is a pain to me. The other thing that when you, um, Switch from hourly to per project is now you can budget better for your own business.
You know, that there's this clump of money. There's no like weird thing where you're like, well, I can kind of expect $2,000 a month, but I'm not totally sure. Or I can kind of expect $5,000 over six months or like, you know, there's no weird, weird weirdness with your budgeting and how you plan your business.
It's all. One thing you're like, all right. I know the payment schedule is 50% upfront, 50%, 30 days later. Right. So if it's that, then I know that I'm gonna have 5k this month and 5k next month. I can now plan ahead for any other months that are coming in, right. That's really important. Hi, woo. I hear you over there making noise.
Woo. I hear you. Woo. I hear you. Woo. She over there making little grumble sounds. So as you kind of go along, right? Hi, woo. There you go. Here you go, buddy. Good job buddy. Um, and Annie says, yeah, it was an inbound lead, so that's yeah, especially that's cool. So I know that Annie you've been dealing with a lot of, um, yeah.
Chronic fatigue and health problems. So it's really cool that you got it. Not only an inbound, but. Then you were able to do the work and that, that is super cool. Like inbound leads, especially good ones, man. That's just like the gold nugget. Right. Um, so as you're kind of going through this work, now we can kind of focus on quality.
We can now focus on not worrying about someone managing us. We don't have to worry, like, you know, we don't have to futz over these little things. We actually get to focus on the work itself. Um, another benefit of working on per project. Um, versus hourly is that now that you can plan ahead, it's easier for you to onboard other clients, right?
You can now onboard. You're like, all right, I have this client. Um, I could probably fit two more in my schedule based on the amount of work that I'm doing for my 5k a month client. Um, or, um, now that I have this much money, maybe I can plan a vacation because, you know, I know in July, this thing is gonna.
Like you just have so much more perspective and so much more space to actually, you know, move around in a flexible schedule, which is one of the reasons I wanted to become a, excuse me, a freelance writer is just to have a flexible schedule. I will. So as you kind of plan ahead now, it's like, you are your actual own boss.
right. You own boss, right? Like you're not working underneath your clients. You're not your client's employee. You're actually working for yourself. You're worrying. How much work you actually have not time, but like when your deadlines are and how you're gonna manage all that. And when are you gonna take time off?
And it allows you to see a bigger picture rather than working on four different projects or three different projects where everything is hourly. And you're just like typing away, stressed out that you're like, oh my gosh, they're gonna be so mad that this invoice is two hours over what I think they thought they said.
I just don't like the guessing thing. Um, that's that leads into the next benefit is like, you don't have to go through the mental stress and hurdles of like, are my clients gonna be mad about this invoice are, do they expect it to be like, we don't have to make these weird assumptions of what our clients expect.
Right hourly, if you didn't already map it out. And they said like, keep it between five and 10 hours or whatever, weird number they wanna nickel and dime with. Right. If they don't do that, then you end up in this stressed out situation where you start making assumptions about what they think. And then when you submit an invoice, you're like, oh no, I don't know what's gonna happen.
Oh my gosh, we can avoid that whole thing by just doing per project. The other part of that. Is like a lot of freelance writers and I used to do this. So like, I didn't, you know, I'm not like a magic magic to like, I, I had to do all this stuff too. So I would get really stressed out about like all of these things that I thought would happen.
And then my clients were like, great, sounds good. Or they were like, what the fuck? This should have been 50% less. Right. But you start, um, Pre worrying, right? You start like pre expecting them all to say all these things and it heightens the anxiety. And we all know that the higher the anxiety, the quality of your work can go down.
I know that's a thing for me. Like the more anxious I get, the worse my work gets because it's like, you just lose everything becomes cloudy and murky. So this is the tip. If you do have to work hourly, don't make assumptions about what your clients are gonna say. Do the. The best you can. And if your client wants to come back and say, you went over the hours, you can say, well, we never discussed a maximum number of hours.
This is how long it took me to create this quality of work. Right. And most of the time, what ends up happening is they come back and they're like, well, it should take you less time. And like, I don't know if this is gonna work out. If it takes you this much time to do this Johnson. And it's just like stupid
So the deal is that, um, when you're kind of going through this stuff, you don't have to. If you really are working hourly and that's the only option to work with this client, then I would try to like figure out, like, submit your stuff and get their feedback first. Don't worry about what they're doing.
Don't make assumptions. Um, and this is something that, um, like relationship therapists talk about a lot is like making assumptions, kills relationships, right? Because what you're doing is like guessing what the other person is thinking and feeling and whatever. And that's not actually the truth most of the time, it's not the truth.
So do your work. And remember that every time you're kind of working with a new client, it can be kind of a stab in the dark. So do your work, submit your stuff and see what they say before you start worrying about anything. Like do the work in however much time it takes you submit it, see what happens, that's your best gauge and thermometer of like, how is this actually going?
Because if you start making assumptions, then your work gets cloudy. Your wor you know, your brain gets murky. It's really hard to create quality work. And then we have too many factors in the pie. So is the factor that your client's upset that the invoice was too high. Is your client upset because the quality of your work went down, cuz you were stressing about what they would say is your client upset because they had an idea of what your work would be.
And this is different. Is your client upset because they thought it would take you five hours and it took you 10. Is your client upset because you already exceeded their whole budget. Like there's so many things that we can guess about. Just don't if you're working hourly. Okay. Just do your work and see what your client says.
And that's like, if you didn't have a predetermined number of hours, which a lot of times clients are like, don't exceed 10 hours and then you're like, why don't we just make this a budget? like a firm project thing, which I think is silly. So, um, if you don't have a set number of hours, do the best you can do the work that needs to be done.
And move on with your life. If you start trying to chip away. Oh my gosh, it took me three hours to do this. It took me four hours to do this part and six hours to do this part. Then it becomes this huge mess. Like it just becomes a huge mess of stress, anxiety, um, assumptions about your clients. I hear you.
Woo. Um, and then you just end up with this, you know, sometimes difficult relationship because it's like, now you don't wanna do this work for this client because it's too stressful or, um, because you know, they're expecting too much for too little, like there's, there's all this weird junk that goes on in there.
Yes. Sh you don't even work hourly. You don't even work. Well, I guess you do work. You shoot, you patrol the yard, right? Charlotte, you patrol the yard and, and make sure that no, uh, no squirrels get us. So there's. Oh, Barry. Sorry. I didn't count you in. All right. Ready? Can you use your high five? Yeah. Good job.
Other one. Good job. Oh, you drooled all over me. Gross. All right, Barry. Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. You caught it. High five. Good girl, other one other, one other, one other one. Other other one. No, they let you know. Good job. You SAS, you try to get away with just using one paw over and over again. This is why I, you know, there's this dog that I follow on Instagram and, um, He has a little bell, you know, like one of those little, like, uh, check-in at the hotel desk bells, I would never get her one of those bells because she just ring it all day long.
3) Why Per Project is Better for Freelance Billing and What to do If Your Client Won’t Budge and Insists You Work Hourly
You drive me crazy. All right, let's talk about number three. Um, if this has been helpful so far, uh, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business subscribe. If you have any comments about working on per project or hourly, feel free to drop 'em below. I always get to all the comment. Um, and I'm always interested to hear how people make the switch from hourly to per project or why people feel like sticking with hourly makes more sense. So always feel free to drop a comment below
She totally does. Charlotte does work very hard at running the SAS department. She does. Isn't that true? Charlie. Charlie, is that true? Do you wanna tell everybody that she still has a scratch on her head from hitting her head outside? Oh, my gosh, she does work hard running the SAS department. I love that.
I'm gonna have to steal that. Annie, if you don't TM that I'm gonna TM it. Let's talk about number three. So, um, let's talk about, um, like I think we've already kind of covered, like why it's better for your billing. Right? Number three, we can talk a little bit about two things. So we, we can pre plan when we do per project.
When we do hourly, everything is up in the air and if you're working on hourly projects, all the. Even if you have a crazy high hourly rate, it still is kind of this uncertainty. Um, even if someone gives you, like, don't go over five hours or don't go over 10 hours a week or whatever, it still is, all of this kind of slice and dice where you're not exactly sure.
The number, like, is it 4,500 or is it 4,000? Is it 5,073? Or is it four, you know, 3073? Like, there's all these weird things that happen. And for me, when I was doing hourly and have done hourly, that's what ends up happening is it becomes. Weird storm of all these things it could be. So when you're billing per project, you have more space to take on projects.
You then can forecast your income further out. You then have just like time to do the work, rather than adding in all these extra functions to doing the work. Um, yeah, the SAS department, she does work hard. She's running the SAS department right now. She's over there making a lot of noise. Woo. Woo. You've got both ears up.
That means you're extra SAS. Barry. You ready? Barry? Ready? 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. All right. Charlotte high five. Good girl. Other one. Good job. All right. Have our little high five lady. So that's kind of the deal when you're billing, it just gives you a lot more perks with per project. And like I said, when I started this whole episode, it was about why do I wanna get paid less money for working better and faster?
You don't wanna get paid less money for working better and faster. You wanna get paid more money, which is how you get into per project. Which is how, um, like if you ever see freelance writers, when they say like, oh, for this project, my hourly rate was $400 an hour or $500 an hour. It's because they're working per project.
They're not actually charging a client 400 or $500 an hour. Right. They're saying on the back end, when they calculate how much time it took them to do this work, it was $400 an hour because what ends up happening if you go to a client. I would guess almost every client, if you're not a lawyer and you walk in there and you say, my hourly rate is $500 an hour, they're gonna be like, this isn't gonna work, or they're gonna immediately say you have to get it done in four hours or, or whatever it is, 10 hours.
Like, you know, it's just that way, I think, in a content space. Um, and if I'm wrong, correct me, I think in a content space, if you walked in as a content marketing writer, And you said the hourly rate is 500 bucks an hour, or if you went in for your content strategy project, and you said the hourly rate is 500 bucks an hour with no idea of like how long it takes or even if it, you say it takes 20 hours.
Like, I think that's a tough sell. It's a lot easier to say, this is what you're getting, and this is the price for it. Just if it takes me longer or shorter or whatever, that's it. So, all right. Um, what we wanna talk about is like, let's say, um, woo. Woo. Let's say, woo is your boss. Let's say Minnie is your boss over here.
Charlotte's your boss. And she's just wooing at you all the time. What would you do, Charlotte? I hear you. I hear you down there. Okay. So, um, what do we do? What do we do? Here you go, buddy. One, you three dogs. Good job. What do we do if our client won't budge? Let's say you have a potential let's there's two situations.
So let's say potential client and client. So these are the two situations. Your first one is your potential client. Let's say your potential client won't budge. And they're just like, Nope. You, in order to work with us, you have to work hourly. So your choice is now ready, buddy. 1, 2, 3 dog. Good job. Your choice now is do I wanna work with this client?
And if I do wanna work with this client, they better be giving me some really great clips that I need. Or this is a really high quality client in my niche that will help me get a bunch more. So when you're looking at all this stuff, your potential client is like, you have to work hourly. You have to weigh that in.
What are the benefits for you in the outcome part? And the outcome part is clips. Most of the time when you're working hourly or making less like very rarely have I seen people work hourly and actually make more money like that. They, they, and even if they are making more. That means they're actually leaving money on the table, cuz if they were working by the project, they could make a lot more
So, um, you have to decide if someone says like, Nope, I'm sorry. Like we can only do hourly. That's how our a that's how, um, uh, our AP department works, you know, accounts payable, AP, uh, you have to do this, so then you have to say all. Do I need a CA let's say it's like a case study. Do I need a case study clip?
Okay. Uh, no, I don't need a case study clip, but will this particular client really help me get to the next level will working with them be great for getting other clients in this niche? Or is it someone, one of my dream clients or something really useful, right. You have to weigh all of these things. Do you need that type of clip?
Is that niche really important? Is that client really important? Um, and a lot of times, you know, it could come down to money where you're like, oh man, right now, my work is slow. I really do need the money. Uh, yes, I will do it. There's a lot of factors with a potential client, but when you're looking at it, it really has to outweigh the hourly part.
You have to out like all of the benefits, all the outcomes, the clip, and the wor the, the, like, not notoriety, but, um, the ability to get other, like other clients in that niche all have to outweigh the fact that you're probably gonna make less money by working hourly. That's a potential client. You have to weigh all those things.
And if it turns out that that's not gonna work, that client just isn't your client. That's the thing is there's a jillion clients out there. , there's so many out there that are looking for people just like you. This is something that it took me. like, I don't know, five to seven years to figure out probably seven.
No, probably not seven, but like five to six years, there are lots of clients out there who are looking for people, just like you, who would be happy to pay you by the project or work with you. Exactly how you wanna work or speak to you. Like you're a team member or respect you. Right? There's lots of people out there like that.
We don't have to worry about this one client that like wants to make us do stuff we don't wanna do. so you walk away. If it's not working out, it's totally fine. It's just like, um, you don't wanna date everybody in the dating pool. like, you don't wanna, like, you you're like, right. You don't wanna like go on hundreds of thousands of dates, right?
Like the idea isn't just to, um, just to like, I guess for me, when I think about it, like the idea isn't that this is the only person, like the only person that will date you or the only person that will work with you, there is lots of them and it's okay if it's not for you. Right. It's okay. That's fine. I will, we'll go back to your Haba hole, go back to your HAA hole.
That's okay. Right. If you go on all of these things, you eventually learn. Very quickly. Who's right for you. And who's not like, this is why I always stress client calls, you get on these calls and someone says, we want you to work hourly. There's no way around it, you know, whatever. And then you get to feel a feel for them anyways.
Like if they won't bud on hourly, is that because they don't wanna negotiate? Is that because they don't see it as a teamwork thing? Is that because they wanna treat you like an employee or is that something that they just set up and they're like, I'm sorry, this is company policy. I really wish it was D.
Um, we love your work. We still wanna work with you. I hope that this works on your end. Like, what is the conversation like? But at the end of the day, what is the outcome? Like? What outcome are you getting clips? Are you getting experience? Are you getting, um, a, a name, like a, a someone that you can say, cool.
This is my first, um, hospitality tech client, and now I'll get other ones. Like is where are we going? Like, what kind of benefits are we gonna get? If we have to take, you know, the stab of hourly basically. um, the other part of that is current clients. For me. And this is something that, um, I should talk about more, but I've had clients switch from hourly to per project with me.
Like we started hourly. Oh no, we started hourly. And then we ended up switching to per project cuz they were like, wow, this seems expensive. we should do this by the project. I'm like, yeah, we should. And it wasn't even the same. Like the, the cost was basically the same, like by switching to per project. Um, it was basically the same, but it was more expensive because they had to like be involved at all of these stages.
Right. So basically for them to do it, it was taking more of their time and more of their energy and more like, it was just crazy. So like the overall project, me plus all these people working on it and whatever it was costing, more money rather than just letting me go off and do my own thing and they can do their own work and then they can evaluate my work when they get it.
So I've had several clients switch from hourly to per project because it's just, it makes more sense. It's more logical. Like it's planning for everybody. It's planning for me on my end. What's my income. How much work can I put in my schedule? When can I take time off? It's all blocked out a lot easier.
And I think the value is more clearly communicated with a per project. with hourly. It's just like this mass confusion almost like unless they cap it at hours. Right. And I just think that's silly. When you make the switch, right? You have current clients that can switch to per project. I always try to do that.
I hate working hourly, not only as a, like a slow per, like putting everything together, just slow in general. And that's my own thing. Like maybe, I guess, I don't know. I guess I don't compare myself speed wise to people. to me, it just feels very slow. A lot of the times, cuz it's like I have to like knit the piece.
I always kind of like think of it as a puzzle and it takes me a while to solve the puzzle. I hear you. Woo. I hear you. Woo. But the key is I would never sacrifice quality for time. Like I would never try to speed up my process just to be faster when I'm sacrificing quality. So for me, quality is always first number one.
And if that takes me more time, so be it. So when you're making the switch for me, I would always negotiate four per project. I don't have to stress anymore. I don't have to worry about what you think of my. I don't have to worry about how much time this takes me. I don't have to worry about, like, if I made a mistake and I have to go back and fix it, I don't have to do any of that.
Cuz they already are paying me a thousand dollars, regardless of however many mistakes I've made that I now have to go back and fix. Instead if I was doing hourly, I'd be like, oh yeah, it's double the price. Cuz I made a bunch of mistakes and then I had to go back and fix it. That's a problem. Right? So for me I would always, I hear you.
Woo. I hear you being. Can you go back to your ha hole? Nope. You gotta go back to your HAA hole. That's not your ho hole. That's the opposite direction. I would always argue for per project. It's just a lot less stress. It's easier to plan. Um, and there's a way to work it out, especially. Oh, Bo you're so close, especially go back to your HAA hole, go back to your how hole, especially if your client gives you that option.
If your client is giving you the option of moving to per project, I would do. It just is a lot easier, especially when you're starting out, when you're starting out. And you're not sure about time and you wanna get it right. Being right, like getting the thing right. Matters more than time doing the thing, the way the client asked you to do it, following the brief, following the examples, putting the keywords in, um, finding images.
If you have to do that, finding good research, finding good, um, interviewees, all of that matters more so than. And for me, if I can take the pressure off myself by just saying this cost X dollars, then I don't have to do all this weird gymnastics, these emotional rollercoaster type things just to get the project done.
All I have to do now is focus on the project, submit my invoice. That's it. That's one of the reasons I've always loved working for magazines. They're like, okay, cool. Sounds good. Here's your assignment. See you in, you know, six weeks and. Excuse me, you go off and do it. You don't have to worry about all these other strange, hourly things.
For me, I feel like reiterating those benefits. Hey, if we do per project over hourly, you already know what it is. We can, you know, negotiate a per project rate that fits, you know, for both of us that fits your budget and fits what I feel like is the value of the work. Um, and then that way it's, you know, we have a schedule.
I send an invoice every two weeks, or I send an invoice once a month. There's no guessing games. You don't have to manage me. Um, when we move to hour, uh, per project over hourly, there's a lot less moving parts. It's just flat fee. You don't get any surprise invoices. If it takes me more Mo more time to do something, it doesn't cost you more.
I feel like that is a pretty easy, like switch to per project. Um, really where you end up getting into. Issues with a client is like when other parts, right? Like, uh, AP wants everyone to be hourly, then you really have no choice. So let's say you start working with a client. And what ends up happening is that, um, you just like are realizing you're not very making very much money, right?
Like they're capping your hours. But the deal is that let's say you can only work five hours a week, but the work is actually 15 hours. Now you just get unpaid time for 10. That sucks. And that's happened to me. That's happened to everybody where you, you just, aren't sure about time. And then you realize they're asking for a lot more work and they just ask you to like run the hamster wheel to get it done.
Um, or what ends up happening is they're like hit five to 10 hours a week, you know, but then some weeks it's like four hours and some weeks it's 12. And then you're kind of stuck, you know, on either end of that spectrum. And then you're like, well, am I padding my hours? If it only took me four hours when the minimum is five.
All of these questions. So what you really have to decide if you have a client like that is like, do I wanna keep working like this? Or I guess it's and or can I find other clients who will work with me by the project? So I don't have to do hourly. How is this impacting my bottom line of my business and making money?
Do I need this client? Do I need these clips? Um, is this client respecting me? Is this client basically in an O in, um, a situation where. Their hands are tied, where they have to work with AP. Like this is the only way to do it. So you have to kind of figure out, um, all of these different metrics that go with the project.
For me, I really hate taking hourly projects. Like I, I almost won't do it. Like there has to be very magical, special. Like almost Olympic circumstances. Like every four years I'll do it. . Um, but it just depends. So if you're stuck in that situation, if you're stuck in hourly, you really have to weigh that on.
What are the other options out there? What are the other projects I could get? What are the other clients I could get? How do I switch to per project with other clients? Is this client worth it? Is this client worth keeping this weird hourly arrange? Um, where sometimes I feel like I might have to pad my hours to reach the minimum of five or sometimes it's, you know, 12.
So I have to get unpaid for two hours, whatever that is. We all have to make these tough choices. This is part of running our freelance writing business. This is part of like owning a business and sometimes it co does come down to money. Sometimes it comes to relationships. Sometimes it comes to.
Sometimes it comes to like this client is, uh, you know, it'd be great to keep having work from them for a bunch of other reasons. You have to go to your ha hole, go to your ha hole, go to your ha hole, get your sit. Oh, so close. Um, sometimes you have to make those choices. But for me, most of the time, if I'm working hourly, which would be extremely rare.
And I don't like it um, I would just abort. I would just. I'd be like, sorry, this isn't working, cuz I know there's other clients who are out there who will work with me the way I wanna work and who will, um, you know, be more of like a, there, there will be more flexible rules with AP rather than it being so stringent and there will be options where I can go and.
Negotiate different things. Like we kind of wanna make sure that we're working with clients that can work with us like that, you know, understand how this whole freelance thing works. Um, but that's the choice. The choice is like, if you have a potential client that insists on hourly, what are your outcomes?
And the same thing. If you have a client that's making you work hourly and you just don't like it, you have to decide like, what, what is the benefit of keeping this client versus getting a new. Um, and sometimes that does come down to money, but there's like, I always believe, like if you are tracking your income and you're tracking your.
Then you will know very quickly whether or not you need to keep that client. And once it becomes very clear that you don't wanna keep that client, you need to do all that marketing. You need to send your letters of introduction, your Lois and your pitches out, and you need to start doing some marketing to replace this client.
So that eventually, you know, you let's say you finish your last deliverable before they just assign a new deliverable or a new piece of content. You're like, Hey, this, you know, I, my schedule has changed or you tell them, you know, like, You know, you can't work with them anymore. And then you move on to your other clients that are per project.
Okay. I think that's kind of it. I think that's all the stuff I wanted to make sure that we covered. So if you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a high earning freelance writing business subscribe, we'll do another P date.
Whoops. There we go. Charlotte, you have to go back to your Haba hole. You can't just sit there with your dancer's leg out, like, like, uh, like a snor go back there back. Good girl. One, two, right? Oh, sorry buddy. I didn't throw it up. Barry. 1, 2, 3 dog. So close. All right, Charlotte, you a high five. Good job.
Other one other one other one. Nope. You had to do the other one. Good job. All right. Ready, Barry. Well, 1, 2, 3 dogs. Good job. High, five high, five other, one other one high. Good job. Good job fuzz. What? Good job fuzz. All right. So basically the deal is that if you're taking anything away from today's thing, um, Laura says I'm convinced goody, um, is per project typical for new freelancers?
Yes. Yes. Per project is typical for basically what you wanna say is this is how I work. , this is what I have conversations with with my clients now is like, they ask me, how do you work? And what they're really mean is like, walk me through the onboarding process. Am I gonna get a proposal? Am I gonna get a contract?
Um, how does your invoicing work? How is your writing, you know, your process of revisions or like, how will you submit work? What's your deadline scheduled? That's what they mean. And then what ends up happening is you just say, this is how I work. I send you a proposal contract and. Um, and like I said, I have two different invoicing for per project.
So for me, I'd either do, um, 50% upfront, 50%. Oh, 50%, 30 days later. Or I end up doing it every single month. If it's something regular, like if we have a clump of content and we need to submit basically the same amount of content every single month, then I just, uh, tell them that the first month is due up front.
And then every other month I invoice on the first of the month and the payment is due by the 15th. Um, and then you just explain how your process works. You explain to them that they get the proposal contract and upfront invoice, and then you explain how the invoicing works. And then you say, yeah, when I submit work right now, my deadline schedule is three weeks out.
Uh, does that work for you? And then we, um, will go through revisions. And if you have a revision policy of like, yes, there's two rounds of revisions or. Um, then you put that in there, but yeah, this is totally typical for new freelancers. And this is what I tell my students to do. So my students that are in Lance writer, wealth lab, which is not open right now, but it will be open in September.
So we're act. I remember last time I checked the countdown, we're like 80 days away or something, but, um, if you go to mans.com/course, you can join the wait list for when the course opens. So freelance writer, wealth lab, um, you can go to mandela.com/course. Um, sign up for the wait list, but this is why I tell my, my new students all the time.
Like people who are just getting into, um, freelancing or people who are just kind of moving off platforms is you should charge by the project. This is something that you should do. There's no like magic rules where like new freelancers have to do hourly or new freelancers have to do X, Y, Z. You get to set the rules of your business.
That's what's so great about being a freelancer. You get to say, this is how I work. This is what I wanna do. These are the things. That I, um, these, these are the qualifications of working with me as a client. Here you go, buddy. Good job. And that's the cool part, but yes, this is very new for there. This is very typical for new freelancers and you should do it.
Um, okay. What was I saying before that there was something before that I forget, but basically that's it. Oh, if you take away anything, you do not wanna get paid less for getting better and faster. That's the whole rule for me for hourly. I am not gonna get paid. For being better and faster. So over time, right?
Like, like I said, there's this weird thing with clients. If you give them a really high, hourly rate, you say my hourly rate is $400 an hour, right. That really is like, that's really hard for them. But if you say this project costs $10,000, they're like, oh, sounds good. And if on the back end, you end up getting $400 an hour on that project.
That's just the. But for me, you do not wanna get paid less for working better and faster. Remember that. And that's kind of the secret of getting away from hourly. Now, if you have an hourly arrangement where you end up getting paid really well for being for your work, and they're not actually asking you to work fast, they're just saying like, bill us, whatever.
Like if you have a magic client, that's just like, we don't care. We have an unlimited budget charge, whatever you want, then I guess hourly is fine. but. Yeah. I just think, I, I just don't wanna get paid Le and hourly is, is the focus is on the time and the focus is not on quality focus should always be on quality of work.
All right. Annie says I used all of Mandy's training and project pricing and her pricing guide to decide on accepting this gig. Oh, that's so cool. I didn't know that. Um, and it took forever to do the work, but I wasn't stressed because I was consciously chosen. Not hourly. Yeah. Dude. I didn't know that Annie, that's amazing.
I'm really glad that you use a pricing guide. I'll put that link up again, but also that it's the same principle, right? It's the same principle. It does. It did take forever, but you already had a per project price, so you didn't have to stress. You didn't have to worry about it. You were like focused on the quality of work.
You're like, how do I make this great. That should be your focus as a content creator and a content marketing writer and a content strateg. How do I make this great, regardless of how much time it takes me, because we all know that over time, as you get more experience, everything gets faster. That's a natural kind of thing.
As long as you're improving your processes, right? Um, the focus should always be, how do I make this great. How do I make this content sing? How do I make this content actually make sense for their audience? How do I like make it. Magical. Like, how do I, I know I've said magic a lot. I don't know why I've been saying magic so much today, but in any case, that should be the focus, not on how much you're billing and how much this, that, and the other thing and all this weird stuff.
This is like super cool. So I'm really excited about that. I'm glad to use the training and the pricing guide. So I'll pop the link up. So if you haven't gotten the pricing guide, it's free. You just go to man.com/pricing guide. It's totally free. I put up a huge, massive update recently of it with more content strategy work and more, um, content projects.
So more different types of content projects that people have asked for. Good job, buddy. Um, so you can grab that there. That's really cool. Hey Getty. Welcome in Getty. You can't be late. All you can do is join. So we're glad you're. Yeah. And this too, I think is important is that you want the work and experience and clips, right?
Regardless of how long it takes you, that is something that's really important. That's a principle that I've kind of put in my business is like, what is the outcome? Right. I'm getting work, I'm getting experience. I'm getting paid. I'm getting clips that matters more. So sometimes then time. All right. Cool.
I'm glad we went through all this stuff. Um, if you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business subscribe, I wish you all the perfect per project arrangements. Um, if you have to do hourly, you know how to deal with that now and, um, sending all the good vibes for great projects and good clients, and I will see you next Friday. Bye.
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