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Discussion on: I'm here to encourage you, ask me anything!

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jannikwempe profile image
Jannik Wempe

How do you charge your clients? Per hour (if so, do you estimate the required hours upfront)? Or for a particular result?

(Maybe more interesting for German devs: Are you an actual freelancer or do you have a business (Gewerbe)?)

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devmount profile image
Andreas

Hi Jannik,

yes, I almost exclusively charge clients per working hour. In my experience that is best/fair for both sides. I don't have to work unpaid and my client doesn't have to pay more than I worked for. Plus: The client always has the possibility to request additional features without repricing the whole project. And yes: This means I have to estimate the number of hours as precise as possible. The more projects I made, the better I got in estimating. I always talked to my clients, when my estimation was too optimistic or too pessimistic and we found a way both sides could live with.

For the German devs: I'm an actual freelancer, yes.

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Amy

I think a common practise is to charge per hour for smaller less expensive projects and per service on larger project. I'm based in the UK so as an example when I first started freelancing I would breakdown projects into how many hours each part of the project would take and then what I was charging per hour. But when you start working on larger projects It's probably better to work purely on a per project basis, perhaps with a tier system , (if you want A it will cost X, if you want B it will cost Y and so on).