Do you do hourly rates or by project?

[john e. rocket]

Ok so obviously I'm a rookie, based on the question.
So do you all do hourly or by project?
If hourly do you have varying prices for Web vs. print vs. business card design vs. identity system?

Everyone chime in, I'd love to hear your answers as well... Would love to hear your rates, experience and local.

I'm up in SF/East Bay and am well rounded, or shall I say dangerous enough to get myself into and out of trouble. (get in over my head but work my way through it). I'm working on establishing myself and just landed my second pretty good size project, but want to charge reasonable/fair price.

[Ampersand]

Most freelance designers have a base per-hour rate, but they don't advertise it and rarely work by the hour. Instead, it's usually a matter of estimating how much time the job will take, then multiplying those estimated hours by the amount per hour that you'd like to make. Most clients, I've found, shy away from an open-ended per-hour amount and prefer to know up front the total they will be billed for the job. This, of course, means that you have to be good at estimating your time and also carefully defining the scope of the project in the contract.

And speaking of contracts, always put in the contract how much the client will be billed per hour for work above and beyond the scope of the project. For example, if the contract specifies that you'll present three logo concepts to the client, and he or she subsequently asks for a couple more, you can point to the contract and charge extra if the client really wants to see additional ideas.

As for what I or anybody else here charges, it would be sort of meaningless information to provide. The cost of living in the Bay Area, where you're from, is much higher than where I live, so you'd need to charge more than I would to make up for it.

[LickOfPaint]

I actually charge by the day or half day.
It seems to be easier for clients to digest and it stops them nit-picking over exact hours.
It also means that if I overrun by half an hour or under by half an hour, it's more manageable.

[john e. rocket]

Hey both great responses.

Thanks

[HuntingTown]

When you're first starting out it's a tough call. You absolutely should have an hourly rate and charge that, but most clients want to have a total estimate up front. So for that you need to estimate how long it will take you to complete the job and times that by your hourly rate. Now you may not know how long it will normally take you when you're first starting out, so I'm afraid there will be a lot of trial and error.

Logos are the only exception for me. Clients are so so different that some need days of work where others approve the very first sketch. For this I pick a base rate and then charge by hour on top. (minus whatever the base rate is). So say I charge £20 an hour, I charge for 4 hours work minimum (so £80) as my base rate. If the job is done in 2 hours, the client still pays the £80, but if it takes 9 hours they pay £180 (£80 + 5 hours over at £20).

I hope that makes sense.