Reply To: hourly rate for small side jobs

We have two things that are working in opposite directions. That is a flat price to make a sale and an hourly rate that you need to meet which can scare people off. It scares them that it will cost too much if the hours rack up. It also scares then if you tell them you are only going to put a small amount of time into their project. You have to give them and yourself the best of both worlds.

The trick that I use is to get the hourly rate to support my flat rate contract. I present a thorough description of what I will do (# of meetings, revisions, how many sheets, drawing scale, ….) and then bind it with an hourly rate of $100 for additional work beyond what is described. I make the sale, average $1,500 per design, and the client makes darn sure I get all the info that I need from them so that I can get it done within the contract in order to avoid extra charges. The best thing is that I don’t get people looking to play HGTV’s Ddesigner’s Challenge with me and make me do three different concepts. It forces efficiency from the client and any of you who do this know that the biggest killer of profit is the client who won’t let you finish the job and milks your time to death. I’m telling you, this works if you have a solid contract and give them confidence that you know what they want and you know what you are doing.

They see what I’ll do for $1,500 and know that it will take me longer than 15 hours to do it, so it feels like a good deal (which it is). Then they want to sign the contract and off we go.