Ask HN: Do you (freelancers) charge for emails? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you (freelancers) charge for emails?

13 pointspi314159222 comments

I know this question has been asked and answered many times, but I think new answers can bring value me as well as to others here..

Answering for emails is destructive in terms of context switching - You are working for client A and then suddenly an email comes from client B, which totally wastes time due to context switching etc, So even if the answer to the email takes 30 secs, it's still destructive.. Also, I have to stop the hours timer for client A because i cannot charge him for money while i read and answer to client B's email ..

View on HN

No, that's crazy.

This is another reason not to bill hourly: it forces you into a mindset where you start accounting for things like individual emails.

Bill daily or weekly, and raise your rates to the point where you don't have to count beans to provide decent customer service.

Good customer service is meeting or exceeding expectations. That means it starts with setting expectations, and most consultants would do well to clarify that being responsive is standard, being on-call is not. A client should never be left with the impression that email is the best channel for urgent-and-important-low-latency communications. If it requires immediate response, pick up the phone...and text.

The fixed price versus time and materials evaluation is orthogonal. The question could just as easily have been about how fast to respond to emails on a fixed price contract...at the root, it's a screw not a nail.

'Nickle and diming' is a synonym for consulting. Charging for an email is just part and parcel of communicating the value of one's time under a time and materials contract.

A client can pay:

(a) $1600/day to a consultant who will reliably answer dumb emails, or

(b) $150/hr to a consultant who will attempt to educate them about whether they should send emails and how that impacts their cost structure

My experience is that clients prefer (a). For that reason, among several others, I think I'd rather be consultant (a). It worked pretty well for me for the last ~10 years.

Hopefully we agree that there's not much room in the market for consultant (c), who bills for the emails.

Your experience is your experience. I don't doubt that what you have found works, works for you. Markets vary geographically, by industry, and by capital structure. Clients vary in expectations. Contractors vary in temperament. Projects vary in firmness and in scope. The only universal is that everyone should double their rates.

I did my first freelance gig in 1990. It involved Leroying. I've used fixed price. I've been billed out hourly to buy a job by a big firm that always did fixed price. I've chunked my time in half days. I've chunked it by the hour. I've eaten phone calls and charged for them. I've had clients who have more money than you or I will ever see and waitresses...and waitresses are great clients because they pay in cash and always have some in their pocket at every meeting. I've handed off a roll of drawings for $18,000 in cash from a safe placed in my other hand in the back of bar, drug deal style.

Some clients want high maintenance. Some are respectful of the fact that my time is money. Some are even charities and get some services for free. Businesses aren't charities.

All of which is to say is that reasons I wouldn't bill for phone calls or whatever were:

  1. I was afraid of pissing clients off.
  2. I didn't want to be that disciplined.

One day I realized that clients who get pissed off paying for my time aren't going to care what or how I bill. They simply don't want to pay and clients that don't want to pay aren't worth having because...well, they tend not to pay. So billing hourly and nickling and diming and requiring a healthy retainer against final invoice [along with the aforementioned higher rate] turns out to be a useful tool for screening clients. And providing a rate at the initial conversation is a useful screen for random leads.

So yeah, I'll bill 15 minutes for an email. It takes me at least that long to do it right. Charging aligns my interests (getting paid) with those of my clients (my doing the things they hired me to do right and not cutting corners). If it's not worth billing for then doing it isn't probably very important.

It is worth noting that I typically have a single point of contact. It's part of the industry landscape. Yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine from Jr. High. He's a chemist and the primary stay at home parent and does consulting on the side. In his industry royalties are money on the table: I learn something new every day.

I have a friend who has a client who insists upon a (b)/(c) type arrangement, and then also attempts to micro-manage the relationship. Friend has raised the rates to the 'maximum his conscience will allow' and yet the client persists with sometimes urgent support requests and sometimes trivial requests, some of which could be answered by searching/reading answers to old support requests.

>Hopefully we agree that there's not much room in the market for consultant (c), who bills for the emails.

s/agree/wish/

For those who can tolerate it, I think there are a lot of companies who get themselves in the position of needing expertise that they can't manage to hold on to in-house, and then even continue to perpetuate that need by disregarding the advice they pay for.

IANAL. I don't charge for emails, they do, telephone calls too, by the minute.

Surely it depends on the contractual agreements you enter. If you have to provide timely support, define timely. If they can't accept a price for a timely response they're children.

> You are working for client A and then suddenly an email comes from client B, which totally wastes time due to context switching etc

Don't get so vexed. Your time is yours. It is defined in the contract with the client. If they make an unusual request then cool, but 'maker time' is pretty pointless if you get drawn to distractions without your own 'manager time' planning ahead on how to avoid it.

Only read and answer emails a couple of times during the day. For the rest of the day keep your email client closed and notifications off.

You can even add a little notice in your email signature that this is how you operate.

thanks for the reply. on one hand what you are saying make sense.. too much distractions will make my other clients suffer and to me lose some money on the way.. on the other hand - I personally would not go to a freelance guy who only answers my emails 3 times a day.. what if i have an emergency ? (and yes,that is very subjective, i know).

I would prefer to receive fast email replies with a lot of value, rather than an automated response which would make me think i am using the services of a large bureaucratized corporation that treats me like a small fish..

Lets imagine you check your email 4 times a day instead. In an 8 hour workday, you would check it around once every 2 hours. So the absolute maximum time your client would wait for a reply would be 2 hours during working hours. Would your current clients find this unreasonable?

There are not many issues that justify a "NEED A REPLY THIS VERY SECOND" response. You should find that most of your clients aren't sitting at their inbox awaiting your reply, but also get on with their other work. For emergency situations, an emergency number to call if they need a response might be the answer, but stress it's use only for dire emergencies that are costing them real money if not fixed immediately.

This means you can have dedicated time focused on emails, allowing you to form better replies. Cutting back to 3 times a day would be even better. One when you start, once at your lunch break, then once at the end of the day. With an 8 hour work day, 3 times a day is still only a 2 and a half hour maximum wait time.

sounds reasonable.. thanks

Which is more valuable:

1. Receiving email replies fast.

2. Receiving the work you are paying for finished fast.

If I were the client - both are more valuable :)

Have you dealt with other professionals before? Say Lawyers or Architects or Doctors over email?

A 4h reply is good. A 24h reply time is standard. A 48h reply is not unheard of.

Why should programmer be different?

As a freelancer, I can tell you that if you appropriately set expectations with your clients, you can answer emails whenever you want. Personally, I answer all of my emails at 11pm. Nobody else is awake and there's no danger of an immediate reply.

If a client has an emergency, they can call me. My phone hardly ever rings.

To answer your question - no, I don't charge for emails unless the volume is excessive (> 10/day or so, not counting notifications from PM systems and the like). At that point, I just bill them an hour for "Communications and Project Management" and call it good.

It depends on how long the answer is. If it's more than a sentence or two, I'll reply with "I'll write you a brief report on that by day after tomorrow." and that work will be listed on my next invoice. If it's a fixed bid, I'll estimate time for the work and submit a change to the bid. The key is to explicitly notify the client that it will take billable time if in fact it will.

If a client is peppering you with short questions, collect them into a single response. Sometimes you may have to set expectations about what you'll charge for and what falls below that threshold.

I very much like the "pin" feature of Inbox, and I use it to keep hot issues within easy reach and to make it visible to me when they pile up. As others have pointed out, next-day response is not rude, Set expectations about that, too, if you have to.

Yes. I include a reasonable amount of context switching time. Also, say I am trying to sleep and I am thinking about a client's problem; I will include that time too, but only if significant. I prorate the time if it is only partially productive.

As for having two clients at once, if the time spent on both clients and their emails is about the same, then there is no need to stop the timer for small emails. It all sort of blends together. Overmanagement of time is a waste of time.

Overall, the way I see it is that time working for a client needs to be counted, but it is not that important to distinguish how much time is spent on each specific task. The bottom line is what matters.

No. Even past clients as long as they are not abusing us we will always respond. We try to respond the same day, but many times it is the next day regardless of who we are responding to. That is unless of course we are actively communicating about something that needs resolution.

Checking email a couple of times a day is not a big deal and responding than, worse case is usually 4-5 hour gap. If something is more urgent the phone is a better solution anyway. I will say that it is a balance though as some clients if you don't respond to an email in 15 minutes are picking up the phone and calling you wanting their answer immediately. So you have to set the boundaries with clients and make sure their expectations are reasonable and that you are not being unreasonable yourself.

Also one other point, when you are managing multiple clients, a quick email response that says you have received their email and will get back to them by EOD, or next day etc is all they really need. So it doesn't have to be a huge drawn out email. This helps when you are working on Client A and Client B sends an email.

I think it is your responsibility to make sure you dedicate yourself 100% when you're working for a client. That means not being carried away reading emails related to other matters when you're on the clock.

With that being said, we just charge a general fee each month called "Administration & maintenance". It's the equivalent of 4 hours consulting. That usually covers any time spent not directly impacting the work for the client.

thanks for your reply. I liked the idea of a "Administration & maintenance" fee, and it sounds very reasonable to charge for a few hours of "emails & phones" stuff.. thanks 1. Do you charge the normal rate for that or a discounted rate? 2. Do you not accept clients who do not accept this type of monthly fee ? in other words - how important is this to you ?

I would recommend adding this Admin time in to your hourly or project rates. Most clients aren't going to be happy with an added admin/maint. fee. If it's built in to your rate it's easier for everyone to handle and you won't have them questioning your invoice for an extra 3 or 4 hours of time.

Plus if it's built in you'll worry less about tracking time for emails.

Keep it simple, you need email to stay in contact with clients/getting new work so just check it a few times per day especially if feel it's becoming a problem. Responding fast takes a little time, but will keep your clients happy. Another great option is to hire a VA to review your emails, respond when they can and forward you the important ones. Maybe setup a mail@ or support@ or project@ email for clients to use instead of your specific work email.

I work in IT and I make 15 dollars an hour - gas/tolls/and maintenance of my vehicle (I drive about 150 miles a week). I bill for a text message.

You do if you have a client that won't stop pestering you whilst you work. One way to phrase it is to have "tiers" or "levels" of escalation by turnaround time and charge/charge more for faster turnaround.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com