returnButton, post: 12574 a écrit : Hi.. I’m new here.. been freelancing for a while and consistently I’ve come up against the same question: How to charge for my services?
A lot of clients, especially the non-savvy, seem to expect to ‘buy’ a website off the shelf and walk off with it. In my experience this just isn’t how it works though.
A website needs to be maintained, upgraded, SEO’d… the list goes on. Then there’s hosting per year. Many clients are surprised by these charges, and the usual response I get is that they’ll arrange their own hosting and save some cash thank you very much. Which leads to my next issue.
If you’re coding to high standards, this means you’re writing re-usable code. The sites I’ve made, while bespoke to an extent, all use the same core set of functions/modules I’ve written. In fact it’s more than that, it’s a mini-CMS. So when I make a site for someone, I include all that code. But this is code I’m going to re-use, it’s not strictly ‘theirs’, it’s my livelihood, and I don’t want them walking off with it.
Charging a one-off fee and nothing more isn’t very sustainable as a career model, but I find setting up some sort of ‘lease’ or monthly/annual fee puts people right off. I guess it all boils down to contracts and making people understand what they’re buying, what they own and what to expect from me.
So, what do you do?
Depends on time that you are willing to spend on your client.
Often, 100$ for one fast do-and-forget order is much more profitable than long 1000$ project that takes few monthes, and requires constant repeated attention.
As for sustainable business model - i would advice you to just grow your connections and be sure that you have an increasing flow of orders. (So you can apply your reusable code there 😉 )
If you want to be a 3D artist,
listen to the very good advice from Scott:
ScottRiley, post: 12435 a écrit :
A good portfolio is VERY important, to show potential clients exactly what you're capable of and how versatile you are.
...
DO NOT LIE - it might seem tempting at first to try and impress clients by claiming to be able to do something you're not capable of
...
Good luck!
because 3D artist can ONLY be judged by their portfolio.
but if you have a decent one - you will get hired very fast, trust me 😉
