Proper way to ask more per hourly for your part-time freelance gig | Hacker News Reader

Proper way to ask more per hourly for your part-time freelance gig

7 pointsmikerichards4 comments

Along with my full-time developer position, I started doing some contract work for a guy's company I used to work with since last November. This is the only freelance client I have right now.

I really enjoy the work and the reason I took it was to learn a lot more about front-end development. At the day gig, I do a lot of back-end work, along with about 15-20% client-side technologies - Silverlight (dead), WPF, and some MVC/Razor/Kendo stuff.

The part time gig is great. I enjoy working with the guy who is my contact at the company and the learning experience has been great.

But I'm wondering if I'm also selling my self short. I'm only charging $65/hr. There was a throw-away comment that the guy brought me aboard had made that leads me to believe that I could have gotten more, and the CIO has been impressed with the speed and quality of my work, so I've been thinking about how much I'm leaving on the table.

Now I live in the midwest (St. Louis) and have a very good base salary (120k/yr), and I'm doing about 40 hours on the freelance gig. The freelance gig consists of ASP.NET MVC 5, typescript, controller code, but also more of a consulting role as in "best practices", like "don't string concat a bunch of markup in the controller", and other such things.

In any case, we plan on buying a new house soon that might cost a pretty penny, so I'd like to bump up the rate to at least $80/hr without ill-will feelings on my part or their part if it doesn't go through...or even them begrudgingly giving me the money but having "secret hate".

There's lots of work to do still and I think they have deep pockets, so I (a) would love a high-paying job with them where I could work at home, so (b) don't want to generate ill-will, but (c) all gigs eventually come to an end so want to maximize my revenues while its hot.

Any advice is appreciated.

You are definitely selling yourself short. This is one area where you absolutely must not trust your instincts; they will give you wildly wrong answers.

A rule of thumb to start off with for calculating freelance/contract/consulting rates is to assume 1000 hours/year and figure how much you need to charge for what you want to be earning. By that rule of thumb you should be charging at least $120/hour - arguably more because this is your precious free time you're giving up, placing your health and happiness in danger, and you don't really need the freelance gig. If they balk at $120, they were never going to replace your day job and you're better off without them.

First, think of what you will do if your client refuses to increase your rate. What is your BATNA? Are you prepared to walk away?

If, after rejection, you plan to continue with the client at the same rate, you will need to make sure the negotiation process does not sour the professional relationship moving forward. This means making sure that you're emotionally prepared to be rejected and also negotiate in a manner that does not come off as aggressive or manipulative.

The best way to ask for it is to highlight the clear benefits you have delivered already and to paint a vision of continued benefits moving forward and then ask for your new hourly rate. Ultimately it's as simple as that.

You will need to overcome objections be referring to the "market rate" and positioning yourself as referring to objective external standards.

Similar to getting a raise at a full time job, the best way to walk up your rate as a freelancer is to get a new client and charge more.

In lieu of that option, I'd suggest finding a good stopping point (say after a feature is completed) and talk to your client about pursing further work at a different rate. Since they like both you and your work, I wouldn't be nervous about creating animosity—developers are in EXTREMELY HIGH DEMAND and they will be happy to properly compensate you now that you've proven your value.

I will say that it's still much more difficult to get a raise from the same client. Even if you like working with them you should at least see what else is out there for no other reason than leverage during negotiation.

Only $65 per hour?

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