This flat-rate could be the solution I am looking for to gently, efficiently, and of course amicably, push my clients to understand my new job has made my free time MORE valuable, and not that I don’t really need the extra money. I truly love working with my clients, which is why I decided to keep them, if only for a few hours a day, however they are currently conditioned to rely on me for EVERY small detail/issue that comes up.

this was an interesting take on it, as well: http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=126722

but your article is so clearly focused on our kind of business - it’s very much appreciated!

The sooner we all get to the point where we’re putting consistent value on our time, the sooner we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

To address your question of what you charge as you get faster, well, that’s one of the main reasons so many of us bid on a project basis.

If I can complete a project faster than someone else can, I have two choices. I can charge less, for less time, than the other person does, and then fill in that time with another project or client. Or I can charge the same for the PROJECT as that other person does, in effect, making a higher rate.

I take the second option. I offer my clients, generally, better quality work, faster, than they might get elsewhere, at about the same project costs, for many things (more for projects that very from the routine in various ways).

But the situation you describe is the one that finally taught me to raise my rates. I realized I was doing better work, faster, and just getting less for it, so I moved things upwards.

(There are other situations where efficiency can be penalized. I used to do a lot of video writing, and producers would estimate based on minutes of finished video — say, for example, they budgedted scripting at $1,000 per “finished minute”. I eventually moved away from that kind of pricing, because if you’re in the writing business, you know that it is much more challenging to write compactly, succinctly, to be more effective in less time. In other words, that pricing structure rewards the rambling writer who can’t come to the point, and penalizes the truly effective writer who makes the most of the audience’s time and attention. What it has in common with your question is that it was another situation where better work would be penalized without an adjustment in the pricing scheme.)

I charge $75/hour. My former employer, where I worked for 12 years, and I started on a project and I told him my hourly rate and he said kick it up to $85/hour as that’s how much he was used to paying. Sweet!

Thanks for the info.

I do wonder, though, how you respond to the question of using an hourly rate when, as you gain continued expertise and experience, you can complete the job more quickly. With a flat rate, it doesn’t matter whether it takes 10 hours or 7 - you still get paid the same amount. With an hourly rate, do you find that you have to adjust your rates upward to factor the shortened time factor into account?