By Scott Wills

Image from iStockPhoto

One of the most important questions any freelancer will ask themselves in the early days of embarking upon a life of being one’s own boss, is do I work at home or do I pay rent and get my own office? The decision should not be exclusively based on cost, there is also an overhead of efficiency. Can you be trusted to work diligently and efficiently in your own home or is the temptation of distraction too much? But what most people might not consider, is a third alternative, and this alternative may be the perfect compromise between working at home and the office: your local public library.

The library is an office away from home, and, brace yourself for this, it’s available to you entirely rent-free! But that’s not all. It’s quiet enough to allow you to work productively, but it also gives you the option of a real-life corporate office if you so desire, with the gentle flow of both young and old drifting to-and-fro while you work, and all with only the quietest of noise and disruption. If you are particularly imaginative, you can even pretend the entire library is your own organization; take it a step further and imagine all the people in the library are your employees, and they’re being quiet because you’re the boss and they don’t want to upset the boss. Not that I’ve ever thought that, of course. Far too busy freelancing for that kind of imagination…

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by contributor Scott Wills

(Note that any figures quoted in this article are purely for demonstrative purposes, you must consider your industry, country, expertise and other circumstances to determine a rate for your work)

Image from iStockPhoto

Price your services too high, and you lose the gig. Price yourself too low, and you wind up feeling resentful about the project, which in turn may ultimately culminate in an inferior result. So what then is the best way to price a freelance project, win the contract, and make both you and your client happy?

Your Break-even Baseline

To begin, you have to establish your hourly baseline. What is the minimum amount of money you need to charge as your hourly fee? What is the minimum amount of money you need to cover your overheads without making a profit? This, fellow freelancer, is your break-even baseline. Once you establish a baseline and start to understand that earning anything less than this equals a bad, unprofitable business, it will make it a lot easier to determine how much profit you then want to make. In turn, this will ensure financial viability for your ventures, and can help price your projects more competitively in the current market.

Above all else, establishing a baseline is about being honest with yourself. If you are unrealistic about how much to charge a client, you are only fooling yourself and in the long run you’ll probably get hurt doing it.

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