And a little something from me too... I've got two flat rates I operate when doing my freelance work: one for professional clients and one for friends/family. The friends/family rate basically equate to me producing things "at cost" (which in itself has a certain markup because generally I have no materials cost to worry about - it's me and my computer suite) and this fact is known by those clients who fall into this group. They know a substantial discount has already been applied so they never tend to argue. For me personally this has always worked fine.
The professional figure is open for a minor amount of negotiation but the clients don't know this unless they quibble about the figure I present them with (a figure generated almost identically to how Stephen does it now). The negotiation usually goes along the lines of "well, based on the project plan I've roughed out it's gonna cost you this" "that's a little more expensive than I was expecting/that's over our budget" "fair enough, how much can you afford/what were you expecting" "we have got this to spend" Now if that figure they offer is still acceptable to me (based on worload and how much of a pain in the arse the client can be) I'll take the work for what they say. If that figure is tool low it's a case of "well, because of reasons a, b, c I can't go any lower than Âxxx to produce the work as we've outlined." and then proceed to chop down the project to fit their budget. I've implemented this approach at the company I work for and it works pretty well, but I have found that offering a discount or this budget negitiating means that they tend to come back to me in the future offering ridiculous money expecting me to work at lower rates all the time. I do point out to them that the previous projects were either reduced in price or scope because of their budget constraints and they tend to accept that. All in all about 80% of the work I do at the company is at full price by using this approach. MOU P.S. Scope creep is always billed and projects usually get paused until the client confirms how they project should proceed based on the options and questions I provide. Reworked figures or additional costs in that event always accomodate for this delay too (hell yes they're still paying me if they change a project from under me and they wait around trying to make up their minds). ____ • The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM • ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Send Your Posts To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To set a personal password send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words: "set WDVLTALK pw=yourpassword" in the body of the email. To change subscription settings to the wdvltalk digest version: http://wdvl.internet.com/WDVL/Forum/#sub ________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________ You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with.
