I do believe I have posted one article about rates for freelancers on this page, which is not written by me. So today, ‘thanks to’ the discussion with my old friend – new colleague, who asks my advice for the rate she could propose to one of her potential clients, I have courage to have a quick article to share with you all.
First of all, I can assure that there is no perfect answer for the rates of a job for a freelancer. There are many underlying elements to consider before choosing your proposed rates for a certain job. However, in this short article, I would like to discuss about the element of hourly rates – which can be very great element to start calculating for your freelancer rates of all jobs.
What is your hourly rate?
This can be easily counted based on different factors, naming living standards, national standards, your expected earning per hour, per day, per week, per month, and per year… For example, if you expect to earn 2,000 dollars a month while you are ready to work five days a week, four weeks a month. After simple calculations, we have 100 dollars a day (before tax for those who declare and pay taxes in their countries).
Then, how many hours a day you may devote to the work? Eight, seven, or just four – as for me, I may take four to five as I am current taking care of two enfants about full-time. So you have your expected hourly rates 😉.
And next is your productivity rate – this is simple: how much work you can do in one hour? Let’s take an example of translators. If you can translate 500 words an hour, so how much the rate of a word to propose to your client? Another simple mathematical problem, right?
Then, the next task is to only find the job which satisfies such rates!?! Oh, no, life is not so simple, especially in a freelancing career. What you demands must go with the supply. And in this case, we have to look for market rates.
What is the market rate?
I am not going to give a definition for this term, but to give you ideas of how and where to calculate this. There are professional pages so that you can find the information for reference. For example, I found this on Proz for translator: https://search.proz.com/?sp=pfe/rates. But again, this is for reference, and you have to based on other factors, which I might discuss on the next articles. 😊
In this second short on in this welcome series of Rates for Freelancers, I would pause here for the next time of courage to continue… Wish you all a nice week of working!
