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I spent 10 years freelancing. If i can give an humble advice: you don't cost your customer some money, you produce some extra value for him. Charge between 10% and 30% of the extra value you provide to your customer. Charging per hour is a trap. It is nice to start, it is easy to read, easy to calculate but it makes you a commodity. Don't be a commodity, be an expert.

discuss

zerr|5 years ago

Finding out about that extra value is trickier than it sounds, unless the accountant is willing to share the classified info with you.

edouard-harris|5 years ago

There's certainly a knack to it, but it has nothing to do with accountants or classified information. If one has experience in this sort of thing, it's generally possible to ballpark likely value-adds based on a single 30-minute conversation. Experienced consultants in this tier often offer a free initial call with prospective clients partly for this reason.

gadders|5 years ago

Brennan Dunn used to post on here on that topic as well: http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/category/pricing/

CyberDildonics|5 years ago

How do you estimate that and sell someone on it?

simonswords82|5 years ago

By understanding their business really really well.

For example, if I know that an automation that I can create for a client is going to take me 100 hours to setup and save them £20,000 per month I can either:

Charge 100 x £100 per hour - so a one off income of £10,000. Seems like I'm earning good money right??

I can charge them £100,000. They'll make that back in just five months. A BARGAIN. Most businesses would bite your hand off.

The catch for achieving number two is knowing the value I'm providing. I can only do that when I know their business really really well.