[themodelplumber]

I'm almost 20 years into a successful, solo freelancing career. GP's advice is worth researching.

You might not be missing anything by sticking to hourly billing if you are aiming at a downmarket clientele. They usually appreciate hourly billing because they are either making nice margins off of your work (by reselling or by quality derived) or undercharging for their own work. Hourly billing is comfortable for them because they are usually extremely price-sensitive. This works OK for a lot of new freelancers, who themselves are also very price-sensitive.

The upside of only doing hourly billing is steady work. The downside is that you may never understand what upmarket work is like.

If you are aiming at upmarket clientele (or just clientele who are upmarket from your current set of clients), you have to adapt to a different mindset--quality, specialty, and responsiveness are key; pricing is used as a toolset that supports your business goal of offering those three things. Pricing becomes a group of activities that act as a market positioning message, negotiating tool, sales pitch, etc. All of that from a little dollar sign with a number after it (or a set of them).

If you are not aiming at any market, you might be headed downmarket. Good idea to check on that. Most freelancers do the same amount of pricing research as the average lemonade stand. Many freelancers who go out of business have authored their own personal failure narrative that revolves around an uneducated view on pricing.