Hello,

I'm new on this forum but not new around the web. I've been working (and still) as a freelancer but my biggest problem has always been the amount I charge my customers. I have like a phobia, I'm afraid of giving a price because I might scare my costumer and he can run away

Every single suggestions would be more than welcomed!

Hello Nelson,

Setting a price can be really crucial when dealing with someone, especially when its the first deal.

Being a webmaster myself I have sold many times different domain names and websites and I've always "passed the ball" to the buyer, meaning he had to offer me and I would see whether it was okay for me or not

In your case though, being a freelancer can be a bit tougher but I would recommend you to set a fixed price, lets say if you are writing well researched articles you can charge as high as $3 / 100 words (so a 500 words article would cost $15) however many people would beat that and offer the same work for $5 or even less so here is where quality matters. If you are a native English speaker I wouldn't recommend you to look after $10 per article. In addition you can even get hired for a monthly fixed salary of lets say $500 and you can write a fixed amount of articles (at least thats the method I've used in a previous deal with an article writer)

Thanks a lot for your fast reply and well pointed suggestions

I'm not a native English speaker however my English is above the average. I've been charging so far $2 / 100 words and I thought I was selling myself quite cheap

The problem is I can't write more than 20 articles per day because after that I lose my mind and make a lot of mistakes thats why I was thinking to increase the quality of those 20 articles (ie researching and keyword analyzing) and of course increasing the price

What do you think?

I would stick with the government rate. It adjusts quarterly I think. Maybe semi-annually. But if you want more money, and your market supports it, charge more!

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The costing of your services will depend on how much time and value you place on your work. The time factor is easy to determine; you have to know how complicated will the task be; how long will it take you to complete the project; and whether you will be allocating extra time (e.g. overtime) to complete it. To compute your hourly rate, you must know how many hours of your work is billable. Assuming that you are able to work for 40 hours a week and 50 weeks a year, you will have 2,000 hours of workable time. Estimate how much of that is spent working on your accounts (40% or 60%?) , and that time should be used to determine your hourly rate.
The value you place on your services will depend on several factors:
Your level of expertise as reflected in your training and experience: the more trained and certified you are, the higher the rate you can charge;
Your public profile: if you are considered an expert * especially if you have authored books, is a regular speaker in industry symposia, or frequently invited by the media as a resource person, you can charge a higher rate
The factors that make your service stand above the competition: is the quality of your service superior to others?

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