Freelance graphic design studio3/13/2023 ![]() ![]() When charging hourly you need to take into account hours that are not billable also for example your marketing, emailing back and forth with clients, admin work, etc. Hourly Pricingįirst, you need to figure out the number of hours you’ll be working per week (x 4 for monthly). Let’s go over how to figure out how to charge for both. Clients come to you for your creative opinion and problem-solving skills, for that reason you can charge for projects based on the value that you bring to the client rather than a standard flat fee.ĭepending on what phase you’re in of your design career (Newbie, Freelancer, Creative Expert) will determine if you charge hourly or per project. Your main focus is on setting up your business to run on autopilot, creating additional revenue streams, and outsourcing jobs you no longer want to do (hello bookkeeper!).Īs you move into this role, you’re no longer a designer for hire but a creative expert. Once you’ve been at the freelance game for a while, you’ve worked with enough clients to spot red flags a mile away, you’ve got a niche portfolio, testimonials to back it up and your design process is so streamlined you could easily hand it off to another designer to handle. Setting your business systems up so that repetitive tasks can be automated and creating a marketing strategy that brings you in consistent leads.Īs a freelancer, you have enough experience to charge a flat fee per project and can even begin to explore Value-Based Pricing (Don’t worry, I’ll cover more on Value-Based Pricing below!) The Creative Expert Your main focus should be on getting really specific about the types of clients you want to be working with. You might start with a side-hustle, work late nights trying to get those projects done, or jump into the freelance world with two feet. (Don’t worry, I’ll cover how to work these out below!) The FreelancerĪs you start to gain real-world experience and build your portfolio you might be ready to branch out on your own. When it comes to pricing you can start out charging hourly then move into per project quotes as you gain more experience. If you went to school for design, you learned a lot but you might have graduated realizing there’s a lot still to learn! Continuing your education with online courses is important, the more you narrow in on your design style, specialty and niche you’ll be able to find online courses specifically for your needs. You might even score an in-house position at a studio or company. ![]() The main focus of your efforts should be put into gaining experience, building your portfolio, and networking with fellow designers. Whether you’re a new graduate or a self-taught designer, if you have less than a year of real-world design experience you’d be considered a newb. For the sake of this article let’s break the phases into 3. ![]() Where to start pricing your design services?Ī good place to start when figuring out how much to charge as a freelancer is determining the phase of your design career you’re in. When you freelance you have to pay for your own computer, Adobe subscriptions, insurance, CRM tools, website hosting, the list goes on and the expenses add up quickly! When you first start freelancing you can use in-house salaries as a marker but there are many other factors to consider when pricing a design project. Looking at how much a designer in a similar job title and experience level to you makes can be helpful to see where you stand, but if you’re a freelance designer you need to charge more than what an in-house designer makes. If you comb through the e ntries you can see there’s a very wide range. They created an anonymous survey that has almost 3,000 entries of people sharing their years of experience, company size, race, gender, and salary. I believe the more we talk about money and are transparent about how much we make in our design businesses the more it benefits the design community as a whole.Ī recent article by AIGA titled ‘ It’s Time for Graphic Design to Embrace the Radical Potential of Salary Transparency’ talks about the importance of transparency in the design community when it comes to graphic industry salaries. Personally, I enjoy talking about money but I also understand that not everyone feels that way. I come from a white, middle-class family (aka lots of privilege), and growing up my family always talked openly about money. Pricing can be very tricky because it comes with a lot of existing negative feelings making it difficult to talk openly about. After making a TikTok post about how much I charge for my branding projects blew up, I received a lot of questions about pricing and it got me thinking about how many designers struggle with it, I know I certainly did!
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