My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [22]
MAKE A RESOURCE PAGE. That way, you can swap links with other creative types you admire. You can never have too much word of mouth or too high a search engine ranking. And blog or no, more links lead to a better Google rank. Which of course leads to more clients finding you out of the blue.
So, to sum up, class, when it comes to creating a website, personable and accessible is the new black. Trying to look like you’re the next IBM? A definite website don’t. “If you’ve got something good to say, if you’ve got a good product to sell, you don’t need a website that looks like you spent $20,000 on it,” says Colleen Lynn, owner of VainNotion, a Seattle- and Austin-based web design firm that serves start-ups. “Much better to go simpler and have that unique flair and personality.”
Chapter 6
Name Your Price
Better living through solvency
“I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.”
—Supermodel Linda Evangelista
Back in my twenties when I was a freelancer-in-bloom, I briefly dated a guy who liked to call me “Little Miss Fifty Dollars an Hour.” I’m pretty sure I was the first person he knew who set her own salary. To him, I was an anomaly, a puzzle, an exotic breed.
Exactly how much did I charge for those press releases I was always writing? he inquired. I tried to tight-lip it, but he kept asking. He was dashing; I relented.
“$250 each,” I told him, explaining that between research, first draft, and revisions, each press release took five hours to complete. Quick on his feet, my date dubbed me “Little Miss Fifty.” To his mind, I was living high on the hog, bringing home close to $500 a day, $2,500 a week, roughly $125,000 a year.
Unfortunately, he was off by a zero.
What my dashing companion failed to comprehend was that although I made $50 an hour writing press releases, I wasn’t writing press releases forty hours a week; ten hours a week was more like it. As my freelance business was in its infancy, I spent most of the workweek trying to drum up new clients, doing jobs that paid far less than $50 an hour, and taking care of my invoicing, contracts, and filing. As is par for the freelance course, I wasn’t billing clients for every hour I worked, unless it was an hour I worked for them. So on any given week, I was spending 25 to 50 percent of my time hustling for new gigs and playing office manager—work no one was paying me to do.
Another point my companion failed to grasp is that I didn’t take home all of that $50 an hour I was (sporadically) making. In fact, I was lucky if my $50 hourly rate yielded $25 in my pocket. Reason being, out of each month’s windfall, I’d have to take into consideration my health insurance premiums, my Office Depot and telecom bills, my retirement account contribution, and the 25 to 30 percent I’d be anticipating for city, state, and fed taxes. (More IRS fun in Chapter 16.)
Depending on whom you ask, freelancers tend to get paid about 40 to 100 percent more per hour than their employee counterparts—and I’ve asked a lot of people, freelancers and clients alike. There’s no point in trying to adhere to some magical formula when figuring out how much more to charge as a freelancer. Instead, you need to calculate what rate will fairly compensate you.
Trust me, this isn’t as painful as it sounds. I’m going to make figuring out what to charge—and ensuring you wind up in the black—easy for you. So get out your pencils and calculators, kids. It’s time for first-period math.
Balance the Budget
First off, grab that personal budget I told you to make in Chapter 2. If you didn’t do this yet, it’s time to face the music. A key ingredient in cooking up your freelance rate is figuring out how much you need to live on each month.
Once you have your personal budget down, make a budget for your first year’s business expenses—Internet access, web hosting service, craft/art/office supplies, business phone, and so on. Be sure to include any one-time purchases you’ll need to get this freelance party