All posts by Dave Yankowiak

After last week’s discussion on Freelance Jam – specifically the portion about billing based on hours versus a flat fee – I’ve been analyzing my entire billing system. For the past three years I’ve billed based on hours and it’s worked fine.

However, in the past few months I’ve been taking on bigger projects. I also feel like I’ve dramatically improved my design and development process. And I’m also realizing that the better I define the project scope and strategy up front, the better the project turns out. I’d love to invest more time into that but I’ve always done things somewhat “open-ended”  (read charged by the hour) to allow clients to change their minds along the way. But that seems to be incredibly in-efficient, especially when working on larger projects.

I still don’t have a complete plan for making the switch to flat fees, but it’s looking like that’s the direction I will go. Herre are a few of the articles I’ve been reading that are making me re-think the whole billing thing:

• Why I Believe in Pricing Work Based on Value (by my Freelance Jam co-host Brian Casel)
• 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Charge By The Hour (some very good points I hadn’t considered)
• Why You Should Never Charge Hourly (great idea to charge even more if it seems like a high-maintenance client)

So if anything, in Freelance Jam’s short existence so far, it’s helping me evaluate my very own freelance business. Hopefully it’s doing the same to some extent for our viewers.