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One question comes up time and time again when discussing freelancing: ‘How much should I charge?’ It is a difficult one and is affected by many factors; your experience, competitors rates, overheads, etc. It is also something that you will need to constantly monitor, as you gain more experience and skills your hourly rate should reflect this.
Firstly do some research, there are many websites out there advertising freelance jobs and also many where you can create a profile to sell your services. Creative Pool (a jobs feed for which will be on MTB soon) and View Creatives amongst the most popular. Bookmark recruitment agency websites (many of them will deal in freelance and permanent positions) and see what payment level they advertise at (i.e. entry-level or senior management?). From here you will be able to assess how much other freelancers with similar skill sets or experience to yourself, charge.
I recently came across an interesting formula for working out hourly rates that may be of use – although I would stress the importance of checking out your competitors’ rates first. To start off decide a realistic target of how much you are looking to earn in a year. This should at least match your previous employment income. For example, say you are looking to earn at least £20,000 p.a. If you worked this out as an hourly rate for a 35 hour week over 52 weeks you would get just under £11 an hour.
However it is very unlikely you will be doing paid work 7 hours a day, 5 days a week. A great deal of your time will be taken up with job hunting, paperwork, chasing clients and other activities that you cannot charge for. Some weeks you may be doing paid work for 50 hours plus, others you may get nothing at all.
It’s best to envision that you will hopefully be doing paid work for about 21 hours (3 days) a week. So in our example you would therefore look to charge about £18 per hour. If you average less than 21 hours paid work you should have enough to get by and if you do more you will be earning more than your previous job.
This may sound high or cheeky but remember, as a freelancer you do not get paid holiday or sick days. Also your clients will not have the expensive costs of dealing with your national insurance, pension schemes, training and other HR issues that follow on from hiring a full-time employee.
If you charge by project rather than an hourly rate the same rules apply, give yourself an hourly rate and try to work out how long it will take you to complete the project. This can be difficult to judge but the more experience you get at it, the more accurate you will get.
The current economic climate may have you contemplating knocked down pricing to make sure you get work in. Whilst this may keep you busy in the short-term, it will no doubt cause you problems further down the line when you try to start charging your full rate. I would only consider reducing my rate if the project is hefty or an on-going appointment. After all, when times are tight it’s better to get a months work at a slightly reduced rate than odd days here and there at your full rate.
It can be a bit of a balancing act as pricing too high can put clients off, but pricing too low can be just as detrimental. You can guarantee that the clients who want you to work for next to nothing will be the ones you have to chase payment for months on end.
Russell Hall a freelance graphic designer based in the West Midlands, working for a variety of clients on mainly print based projects. Find out more at www.russelljhall.com.
Russell Hall
We may be heading into the darkness of Winter, but there is new life in the good ship Media Talent Bank as a brand, spanking new Jobs page and fully functioning RSS feed are now live!
The jobs page currently features job streams from mandy.com and journalism.co.uk with vacancies in the Film, Video and TV, and Journalism sectors. In addition there is now a handpicked summary of the best jobs – from entry level to senior management – in the media industry each month. More feeds will be added as the site grows.
The Out There page (which you have to log-in to view) will still feature great jobs, work experience placements, events and opportunities, so if you have one of the above and you’d like to advertise it for free, please email david.luke.allen@bcu.ac.uk with the details.
Here’s something useful I stumbled upon, no pun intended; www.socialposter.com is an incredibly ugly, yet highly useful site for automating the whole social bookmarking process.
What is a social bookmark you ask? Well, it’s a way of sharing your favourite webpage’s with the rest of the world or just people who share your interests, such as sharing a link on Facebook. Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Digg are pretty popular but there’s a ton of sites out there.
The genius of Social Poster is that it allows you to automate the whole process, you enter the URL, the article title and the stand-first / leader along with a few tags, select the type of sites you want to target and click ‘Start Posting.’
You still have to register on most of the site’s so if you’ve not already done that, it’s not as quick as it may initially seem. But it’s worth it in the long-term if you’re serious about getting your website, blog or articles read by as many people as possible.
Speaking as someone who is still finding my feet as a freelance graphic designer (I think it takes a couple of years minimum to fully get to grips with it), I think it may be of use to write a little on the subject of taking the plunge!
Mention you’re a freelancer and a lot of people will conjure up an image you of loafing in pyjamas in front of Trisha, sending the occasional email from a laptop. While freelancing does give you the chance to work from the comfort of your own home, if you’re going to make a go of it then the televisual delights of Jeremy Kyle and the like should be furthest from your mind.
I should start off by saying that there probably isn’t a perfect time to go freelance, if you’re already in full time employment, finding the time to organise everything you need to will be a struggle. I myself stumbled somewhat into a freelancing career. After handing in my (3 month!) notice at my previous employer I didn’t want to rush into the next job that came along. I was quite particular about where I wanted to move to so started a bit of research and applied to several companies. As my notice period was coming to an end and I still hadn’t found my ideal job I started to look into freelance and temp-to-permanent opportunities to bridge the gap.
As I started to get some sporadic bits of work coming my way the thought of going back to being a full-time employee lost a bit of its shine. Whilst still keeping an eye on the permanent positions, after a couple of months I decided to give freelancing a go for a year. If it didn’t work out I’d search for another full-time position. It’s a decision that I don’t regret in the slightest, and although tough going at times, I am less stressed and earning more then in my previous job.
The main point of this article however is just to impart a couple of observations I have made to help prepare you for taking the leap. I by no means followed all of these myself, but if I had it may have made the transition a little easier. Some points are just common sense but others you may not have considered.
Are you organised?
This is probably the most important question to ask yourself when you are planning to go freelance. I’m not talking about the state of your bedroom floor, but the ability to organise your deadlines, contacts, finances and time in general is one trait that no freelancer can be without. A lot of this comes with experience and is something that will improve over time. However, it’s worth taking a good look at how you manage your time in your current working environment. Ask yourself; would you be able to cope without your line manager organising your daily schedule and account handlers to deal with clients’ every whim. Will you get out of bed on the cold mornings if you are no longer tied to the 9 to 5?
If you have to be regularly reminded of what needs doing in your current role, then freelancing is probably not for you. Clients will expect you to be in charge and not take missed deadlines lightly. If you are unable to organise your lists of potential clients and contacts then you won’t get the work in the door in the first place.
Are you experienced enough?
The question of experience is a difficult one, and one which will differ greatly depending on the industry you are in. Speaking from my own perspective, I have noted very few freelance opportunities for junior designers. If companies are going to pay for a freelancer they will expect you to hit the ground running and handle whatever they throw at you. They will not want to hold your hand and as they are likely to be paying you by the hour or a daily rate, you really need to know your stuff. This is not to say you can’t go freelance as a junior, I have friends who went freelance straight from Uni and have never looked back. Honesty is the best policy as if you are clear from the outset what skills and experience you have and don’t have, then your clients will not feel you’ve led them down the garden path.
Money, money, money…
I have to confess, this is an area that I didn’t get to grips with before starting out and still struggle with. The first few months of freelancing are likely to be very lean indeed as you are scoping out potential clients and spending a lot of time on self-promotion. Consider if you have enough money in reserve to pay the bills while you are getting yourself established.
Don’t forget the taxman as he won’t forget you! Through lack of planning on my part, I very quickly built up a reasonably large tax backlog. When the initial cheques came in they went straight out again without any spare for tax. If you can cover yourself financially for the first few months then make sure you get in the habit of transferring your tax money into a savings account as soon as the first cheque drops through the door.
Tools of the trade
Another point to consider is whether you have all the tools you’ll need to go it alone. If your work is mainly computer-based; do you have a good enough home PC with all the programs you need? Will you need to purchase a laptop? If working in-house for clients they may not have spare PCs/Macs and most would expect you to bring your own. You don’t need to have it all and at the highest spec in the beginning, but you need to have the basic tools of your trade covered.
In-house or at home?
Whether you have the option to work from home or in-house, your own office will again depend on your chosen field. From my experience a lot of my clients want me to work on site. Although I prefer to work from home or my rented office space, if I didn’t accept on-premises work my income would be more than halved over the last year. When times are tight you may also have to consider covering a larger area than would be ideal, so how you travel about is another consideration. It’s worth thinking about this in your hourly/day rate; as if you are travelling over 2 hours a day to and from work, then you will need compensation for the extra time out of your day and expenses like petrol and parking.
Contacts
It’s important to start a list of potential clients/contacts/suppliers before you go it alone. I didn’t start off with any guaranteed clients but through hours of web trawling and emailing, a few turned in to new clients. There’s a fine line between keeping in touch and pestering so keep a record of who you contacted and when. This should help you to consider whether it’s time for a follow-up or not. Don’t expect to get replies straight away if at all. Quite often, people will only get in touch if they have current requirement, if they don’t, then the email will likely be ignored. Looking over my contact list I have got in touch with over 100 companies and organisations since the beginning of the year and received a reply from about 30%. It can be frustrating when you don’t hear back, but its all par for the course I’m afraid.
…And finally, your portfolio
Having an up-to-date portfolio of your work is essential – especially for designers, so make sure you have copies of all your work before you leave your current job. It is increasingly important to have an online presence too. Before clients will meet you they will more than likely want to see some of your work. For designers, a portfolio site is a must, but if you don’t have the web skills to design your own then why not start a blog. It’s free, simple to do and will also help expand networking opportunities.
Russell Hall
Russell Hall a freelance graphic designer based in the West Midlands, working for a variety of clients on mainly print based projects. Find out more at www.russelljhall.com.
Submissions have now opened for 4iP, Channel 4’s new £20m funding scheme for public service, digital media production.
The funding pot – of which £10m is earmarked for the West Midlands – “means supporting great ideas for websites, games and mobile services which help people improve their lives,” according to a refreshingly plain bit of copy on the jargon-heavy 4iP site.
In the West Midlands region, the ‘innovation fund’ will be run from Birmingham and managed by Screen WM, with the agency’s Dan Lawson acting as the main point of contact in the region. The appointment of a Birmingham-based Channel 4 Commissioning Editor has also been planned.
Here’s what 4iP is looking for:
- 4iP is hunting for tiny, risky ideas as well as big, crunchy ideas.
- 4iP will help turn fabulous ideas into delightful running code quickly.
- 4iP will help products showing promise to deliver way more impact.
- 4iP won't support products or projects on an ongoing basis
- 4iP wants proposals from as wide range of people and companies as possible. Nobody is too small, nobody too big. Nobody is too close, nobody is too far away.
- Your idea could make you a millionaire; your idea could earn you a knighthood for public service, but never turn a profit. Either way 4iP is interested in helping you get started.
- 4iP loves connecting people and organisations that otherwise would never get to work together.
Applications can be made via the 4iP website once you’ve registered, being sure to check the submission guidelines before you do so.
Naturally, applications should be well thought out, with preference to projects which re-interpret public surface broadcasting through a web 2.0 lens. Or as 4iP put it, “Is [the project] 100% native to digital networks, with its centre of gravity in participation or collaboration?”
If you’re looking to submit an application, and need to find people to work with, try searching using the 'Advanced Options' on Media Talent Bank, or simply email david.luke.allen@bcu.ac.uk to include a call-out in MTB’s newsletter/Out There page.
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