In my last post, I explained my process for onboarding new clients.

In this post, I will focus on freelance pricing strategies: how to price your projects and figure out your work capacity and timelines.

A note on hourly projects: Most of this guide will be focused on fixed-price, one-time projects. You may also be considering charging hourly, but for design work, I think this is very rare and impractical, especially for bigger projects.

Even if you are working hourly, you still need to provide at least an estimate of how long it could take, which makes it very similar to a fixed-price project. So this guide is still applicable to you.

There are several popular pricing models for one-time freelance projects. I’m highlighting “one-time project” because there are other models for ongoing work (like retainers, hourly packages, even subscriptions, etc…).

• Time-based: How many hours it will take you to do the job multiplied by your hourly rate.
• Market average: What is the average market price for similar work in your region, client’s region or their audience’s region.
• Value-based: Normally for more experienced freelancers: how much profit your work can bring to the client.

You can choose a different one of these strategies for every project. You don’t need to stick to one for your entire freelance career.

With this pricing strategy, you quote a fixed price for the entire project based on your estimate of how long it would take. This price is agreed upon before the project starts.

First, you need to list out a scope of work, this includes all the tasks and major milestones involved in the project. Based on that, you can estimate how many…