As the number of quarries increases many clients ask me how I charge. Till now I have been charging by pages and those pages contain particular number of words. Beyond that word limit I charge extra for every extra bracket of hundred words. Recently I charged by hour and grossly miscalculated the number of hours required to accomplish the task. I told my client that I could finish the document in five hours whereas it took me more than 15 hours. That sucked big-time.
I charge differently for different content requirements but I mostly charge per page (assuming a page contains between 300 and 400 words). Many people on various freelancing blogs suggest that one should charge by hours because this way you can charge a fixed rate no matter what the client wants you to do. For me it doesn’t work because I want to provide a flexible quote to my clients. Besides sometimes I also outsource my work and I am never sure how much time the writer is going to take. It is better to pay him or her a fixed amount for a document of a particular size.
Anyway I am still in the process of deciding how I should charge but for the time being I am charging by page. I have been charging like this for more than 3 years now. Just because I have been charging this way for such a long time doesn’t necessarily make it right but my clients seem to prefer this. The method of payment should be useful both for my clients and myself. What I mean is I would like to charge in a manner that my clients don’t have to overpay me and I don’t end up undercharging.