7 Things to Think About Before Setting Your Freelance Rates

For a freelancer, time is money, so what do you say we get right to it?

1. Know Your Numbers

If we assume 8-hour days and only 5 days in a workweek, then there are 2,080 potential work-hours in a year. But unless you plan to work on Christmas, never take a vacation, and never get sick, you’ll want to cut that number down to about 1,920. Still, of those 1,920 hours, most likely 30 percent of them will be spent doing nonbillable work: admin tasks, invoicing, client negotiations, etc.

Now you’re looking at 1,344 hours a year — or just 26 hours a week. So as you calculate your rate, keep in mind how many hours you’re actually going to be paid for.

2. Know Your Lowest Price

There are two rates you should always have in mind: your absolute lowest rate, and the rate you’re going to charge for a particular job. Knowing your Minimum Acceptable Rate (MAR) will give you the confidence that you aren’t pricing yourself out of business.

There are a couple of formulas you can use to calculate your MAR:

1. (Personal Expenses + Business Expenses)/Hours Worked + Taxes


2. Divide your on-staff yearly salary by the number of hours worked

Both of these results will land you juuuust above the break-even line and should only be used as a basic guideline. These are the rates you should never go below.

Image Source: business evolution via Shutterstock.

3. Work Backwards from a Goal

Before you can make a good decision about your hourly rate, you need to decide how much you want to earn this year. It sounds obvious, but most freelancers work the other way around. And then they’re surprised at the end of the year by how much they did (or did not) earn. Make the call right now: How much are you going to earn in 2015?

Using the above 26 billable hours per week average, here is the hourly rate you’d need to charge to make your desired amount of annual income:

• K/year: .20/hour


• K/year: .80/hour


• 0K/year: .40/hour

For a more nuanced calculation, try Your Rate.

4. Time Is Your Most Valuable Asset

Selling yourself short costs you money. As tempting as it might be to undersell a project when a client balks, it’s in your best interest to stick to your rates. Your time would be better spent improving your skills, taking a class, or learning a new coding language than stooping to charge a rate beneath your MAR.

5. Know Why You’re Worth What You’re Worth

Why do you deserve an hour when your competitor charges only ? As nice as it would be to pull a salary from thin air, even in the freelance world you have to earn what you’re worth. Have you won awards? Been published in respectable publications? Made measurable improvements for your clients?

When you quote a price to your client, know why you are quoting it. Your client doesn’t care how many hours it takes you to do your work. They care about results. Price for the results you know you can provide, and then as your skills improve, raise your rates accordingly.

Image Source: Tramp Sitting on the Floor with Laptop via Shutterstock.

6. Sometimes a Lowered Rate Is Worthwhile

There are instances when it’s worth it to you to reduce your rate:

• If your client has clout and will improve your portfolio


• If your client is doing a good deed and your work is philanthropic


• If your client can send a significant amount of traffic your way


• If the project is such an interesting challenge that you can’t help but accept

In these circumstances, though, it is important to work as if your client is paying premium. The only thing more devastating than underselling yourself is creating bad word of mouth.

7. Your Rate Is Not Set in Stone

Setting your rates is important — but it’s not permanent. Rates are constantly in flux based on your clients’ situations, your situation, and the market’s situation. So don’t panic. It might take you a few tries to dial it in.

Concluding

Setting rates is one of the hardest parts of being a freelancer. So don’t beat yourself up if you find it difficult at first. Often, freelancers have a hard time knowing what they’re actually worth. Or they don’t like the added pressure that a hefty invoice adds to their work.

But if you’re going to make a living as a freelancer, being honest about what your time costs is step one. It’s a form of humility to be honest with yourself about what you’re really worth. And when you find the right clients, they will be happy to pay it.

The post 7 Things to Think About Before Setting Your Freelance Rates appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.

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7 Things to Think About Before Setting Your Freelance Rates

PrestaShop Makes Setting Up an Online Store Easy

With the ever growing popularity of online stores, a lot of people have come to wonder which platforms are suitable to help them sell online. Today we will be looking at one of the most trusted online platforms for setting up your selling business, PrestaShop. PrestaShop is free ecommerce software built on a solid foundation of support structures and helping you the seller prosper.

So why exactly should you consider PrestaShop as your online platform for setting up your business? Let’s have a look at the few points below.

Selling should be easy

When looking at any store provider for your new project, you have to make sure that their platform is suited to your selling needs. No one ever said selling would be easy, but with the right provider, I beg to differ. PrestaShop sets its self apart by having taken care of every detail so that you don’t have to worry about a thing.

From setup, to sale you’re covered from head to toe with guides, directions and ease of use functions. Setting up a store has never been this easy. PrestaShop has two great ways to get started selling online. The first way is by downloading PrestaShop and hosting it on your own server. Or you can go with the new cloud version of PrestaShop, which is hosted on PrestaShops cloud servers, but still completely free. Both options still run off the same version of PrestaShop, it just comes down to if you want to host it yourself, or have free hosting with the cloud.

Walk through their demo

YOU are their most important asset

When it comes to a lot of companies, they worry about their revenue, their platform, their mistakes, their press etc. When it comes to PrestaShop, what I’ve found is that they value their users, and the community the most. Yes, sure they look after their business, just like everyone else, but with a community of over 700,000 you can see why the company has been built around this group. PrestaShop also has the largest and most active ecommerce forum in the world. It’s where you can go to ask questions, find answers and make the most of your online store.

Easy to setup solutions

I’ve tried a lot of software over the years and it amazes me how simple their available solutions are. If I didn’t want to setup my own server and self-host, I’d simply click on their cloud setup, choose my store name and email address and Bam! I’m in. Obviously there will be a bit of a process to go through, I mean you’re setting up a shop to take other people’s money from them…However, PrestaShop has really streamlined the process to help you get up and running a lot faster than most other platforms online will.

If you were to go with the self-hosted solution they offer, most of it will be in your hands. Setting up your server, installing the platform, setup, database connection etc. It comes down to who you want to serve and what your technical abilities look like. Either way, PrestaShop has the best solutions for your store.

Scalability in mind

PrestaShop thought ahead when they started launching online stores. That’s why they have more than 200,000 stores online that have been launched using PrestaShop. One of the key things to look at when building a sales portal for your goods is the scalability of the platform. In this case, PrestaShop is one of the best platforms when it comes to scalability. PrestaShop has no limits on the number of products you can sell, and is capable of handling as many pages as your store might need. They also have a plethora of certified web agencies to help you with anything from design to development surrounding the platform, they will help you make your dream become a reality whilst earning you money.

Hands-On Training

In the day and age we live in, knowledge is everything. Therefore PrestaShop has built an educational training division into the company. Teaching you to become better at using their platform to sell; they has expert instructors on hand to teach you the ins and outs of the platform and how you can take full advantage and be successful using the PrestaShop solution. These sessions are conduct online on a monthly basis, but classes are kept small to make it easier to interact live with the instructor to answer any questions you might have.

Expert Support to help you

Support is the most important part of any company. Especially when the you, the customer struggle to get into the backend of your store, have missing products or any other problem for that matter. The support system PrestaShop has put in place helps you focus on what matters in your business so that they can take care of the rest. You can sleep soundly at night knowing their are people out there that are ready to help you at a moments notice. One of the most overlooked places for support comes right from the forum. Many of the issues you may encounter when creating and running your online store have most likely happen to someone else earlier on.

Checking the forum for the answer to your question is sometime the fastest way to find the answer you’re looking for and keep your store up and running with out any downtime.

Conclusion

You don’t have any excuse not to launch that sock shop you’ve been wanting this entire time or that clothing line. PrestaShop is there to help you setup in no time and run a profitable online store! Are you running an online store with PrestaShop currently? Using another platform and looking to switch? Let us know in the comments below!

PrestaShop Makes Setting Up an Online Store Easy