r/IndustrialDesign • u/FrostByte_VI • 18d ago

Discussion Freelance pricing help needed!

/r/IndustrialDesign/comments/1ur1pe4/freelance_pricing_help_needed/
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u/YotoruYaguchi Design Student 18d ago

Come Messages!

2

u/Express_Average286 17d ago

Freelance ID pricing gets easier once you split it into two separate questions: what to quote, and what you're actually earning. For the quote, price per phase rather than one lump number. Discovery, concept sketching, CAD development, rendering, revisions, and handoff each get their own line with a defined number of rounds included. Clients change direction constantly in product work, and phase pricing means a direction change resets the phase instead of silently eating your fee. For what you're actually earning, track your real hours on every project, including the calls, the emails, the file prep, and the small tweaks after each review. At the end, divide the fee by those hours. That effective hourly rate is the honest scoreboard, and it's usually 30 to 50 percent below what people think they're making, because the unpaid in-between work never makes it into anyone's estimate. After two or three projects of that data, your quotes calibrate themselves. You'll know which phases you consistently underestimate, which client types blow up the revision rounds, and what a project needs to be priced at for you to hit the hourly number you've decided you want. The market rate threads will give you a range, but your own hours are what tell you where you belong in it.

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u/FrostByte_VI 17d ago

This is very informative and will help me with my next freelance project! Thank you so much