Use a spreadsheet to grow the discount of your hourly rates as the block sizes increase. Analyse mine. Encourage the purchase of larger blocks with larger savings per hour for your client and larger upfront checks for you. Build a range of what is acceptable to you from highest to lowest then spread them proportionally to the block size and manually round off the numbers to make them easy for humans to process.
À la carte hourly rate is your typical billable invoice rate plus an incremental premium. Set this higher to allow for, yet discourage, purchase of only one hour at a time for small projects or to allow them to buy enough time to finish off a project without buying time they don't want or need.
Yes these rates are very low. Make a different set and quote different block sizes for each type of job/skill/service.
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I offer my services in blocks of prepaid hours.
Hours are utilized out of a block as they are applied to your business. All time is exclusive and timekeeping resolution is 0.1h. You may add additional hours to your account at any time or take your balance to zero. I offer blocks of other types as well (IT/Telephony, Media Production) and each is accounted for independently and may be used in any order you please. There is no charge for miles. I can be as self-contained or as interactive as your team desires. You, or anyone from your team, can dictate specific tasks at any time. You can file with the IRS as a simple 1099-MISC if we end up over $600.
Progress updates are generated at a minimum of every 10 hours used or 20 days passed as long as you maintain a positive balance > 1.0h and have utilization. Hours unused, after 10 months, decay by half each quarter year thereafter for four quarters then age out completely.
If you would like to proceed [direct them how to send a check or pay via CC or other method]."""