I've had similar problems not charging enough for my work and being
shy about the money issue. Perhaps I don't consider myself
experienced enough for the "pro" rates, even though I've been working
in Finale for over 10 years. My problem is a lack of clients and the
connections to find them. So, I end up charging relatively little,
so as not to turn someone off, happy with the little work I actually
do get. They are mostly students who can't afford much, so I even
have a lower student rate of only $20/hr. This is in NYC! My
reasoning is that either I get a little work for less and the
possibility to attract more clients, or I might end up with nothing
at all.
I tried the per/frame system, even adding an item-per-frame element,
but it didn't end up working for me. I tried it on one job, and
ended up getting only around $150 on a short but complex work that
took around 30 hours.
I hope to get some better ideas, like how to be assertive when the
client's parents imply that $300 is too much for a 3 movement chamber
piece at $20 per hour. Perhaps MM can develop a Business Sense Plug-
In? It would be more useful than many of the plug-ins they've added
recently. :-)
On Sep 26, 2006, at 2:00 PM, dhbailey wrote:
The idea is that you know how much actual time that score took
you. You say you worked on it for 8 months, but that really is
meaningless. How many actual hours of work time did you spend on it?
Take that number of hours, and multiply by the hourly rate you
think you deserve. There isn't any one rate -- where I live, I can
live comfortably charging $50/hour. I'm completely self-employed,
so I have to buy my own health insurance, provide for my own
retirement benefits, pay the full social-security (you don't have
to worry about that, but in the U.S. an employee only contributes
half of this while the employer contributes the other half -- self-
employed contribute the whole thing), etc. So I have worked out
that $50/hour allows me to survive well. Your per-hour rate may
well need to be different, and take into account the exchange rate
between the Euro and the dollar, as well as cost-of-living stuff.
You know what a decent per-hour rate is for your area, use that as
a starting point.
[snip]
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