[TIPSIO]

I don't think there's a perfect recipe, but we have done quite well by marketing ourselves not as freelancers.

Aka, you are a small business. Aka, never do hourly and fixed cost projects only.

Too many people get caught up contract and deliverables and hour counting.

It sucks but you are a service worker essentially in a very high referral industry. Every project should be above and beyond with little push back. If it's unreasonable, everyone will know.

Know how to sell different processes to different people. Small ma and pa businesses are PITA but are also customers. Give them a different process than your big budget customers who always tend to be more easy going.

[skizm]

One of my favorite Matt Levine quotes is:

> Yeah I mean a general lesson here is that you want to be in the sort of business that sends one-line invoices, not the sort of business that bills by the sixth of the hour.

[pinkmuffinere]

Sorry for the dumb question, but can you clarify this?

> Aka, you are a small business. Aka, never do hourly and fixed cost projects only.

My reading is “never charge hourly, and never charge fixed cost”. Am I misunderstanding? What is the third alternative? Retainer + hourly? Something else?

[zoogeny]

I'm pretty sure the parent comment meant "never charge hourly, instead do fixed cost projects only" but the grammar is ambiguous.

One strategy I've seen used is a fixed cost for the project (delivered to spec) combined with an hourly retainer for support and changes. Sometimes there is even an explicit carve out for changes during the development so you can avoid scope creep derailing the project (and the relationship with the client).

You don't want to get into nickel and diming the client: "why did it take X hours to set up a DNS? and what is a DNS? Do we even need a DNS?" etc.

[iancmceachern]

Exactly, I often do this as well. Fixed cost for the things that are easy to scope and predict, hourly for the stuff that's not.

[TIPSIO]

exactly!

[laurencerowe]

It really depends on how much you want to do sales vs increasing your rates because you have a reputation for solving difficult problems.