For a lot of freelancers, billing hourly is the way to go…coz you know the clients will come back and request some tihngs that you may not have initially planned for. Of course, you need to make the client understand that this is out o scope etc etc…but most of the time, their understanding is that they do not need to pay extra money.

What? They didn’t tell you that the “navigation menu” they wanted was actually a FLASH navigation menu? The contact form that you thought would take 5 minutes now takes a whole day because they want each mail to be sent to a specific emailbox and a specific header added to each email?

If you’re new to the business, heed these words. There is no way around it. Clients need leashes, and billing them hourly will keep the project from inflating and everyone is happy at the end.

The important thing here is to not directly bill your clients in such a way. Time is a very sensitive unit of measure for work. For one thing, it doesn’t reflect the quality of the product, and for another, it’s deemed to be more biased towards the vendor.

Hence my use of the word prostitutional to describe it. It’s more like you’re selling your time instead of your service.

So essentially, manage your project in hourly blocks, allocate the costs according to that block, add in your profit margin, and present your calculation as the quoted price.

If you (or the client) require a cost breakdown, break it into “job” allocations.

To me this is a win-win situation.

I sometimes end up going out of scope initially, but I’ve become pretty good at estimating things out, and I make sure to be very detailed in listing the specifics in the contract. This methodology has served me well for over 7 years so far.