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A comment on Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a con... by santodante on Saturday December 07, 2019 @08:36AM (#21730203)
How do I get over the mental barrier of charging more than $100 per hour?

- I'm a junior developer and I mostly freelance for larger companies.

- I feel like $100/hour is the industry standard and if I charge 150-300 I need to do work that requires managerial work.

- 300+ comes from charging a percentage of revenue increase or creating such a narrative, which often requires additional business and strategic consulting.

- On the flip side, I enjoy coding and want to avoid additional managerial and business consulting as much as possible.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a con... by onreact on Saturday December 07, 2019 @08:39AM (#21730208)
Do not think in hours. You are not a worker in a factory. Consider the value you deliver. When you deliver twice the value in the same time you did a year ago charge twice as much.
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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a con... by ghaff on Saturday December 07, 2019 @10:24AM (#21730705)
It does depend. When I was a consultant, we tried to charge based on value (by engagement). OTOH, clients often still thought in terms of hours. If we were on-site for one engagement that was only going to take half a day, they'd often try to hook us up with some other group as well given we were there and had the time. (Typically we'd go along as these were long-time clients.)

And some areas like law are very hourly-based. The one time I did some legal work it was strictly based on time. (At a very good hourly rate including travel time.)

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a con... by onreact on Sunday December 08, 2019 @12:57PM (#21737127)
Yeah, true, that may happen. Ideally you get a combined payment by hours with a bonus for performance. That is often a bit complex or tricky though.

You mitigate the risk of getting paid not enough in case the hours spiral out of control while still getting paid a lot when you outperform expectations.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a con... by satvikpendem on Monday December 09, 2019 @01:45AM (#21740848)
Read Patrick McKenzie's blog. In particular, this: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a con... by k__ on Saturday December 07, 2019 @09:28AM (#21730413)
I simply started billing weeks and not hours.

So nobody can check how many hours you work a day.

If you bill $2000 a week and only work 4h a day, you get your $100.

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