How do you price hourly gigs and gradually increase payscale?

[daviddoer]

I’m interested to hear feedback from sellers on this matter.

I started out pricing my research gigs at $5 per hour. Gratefully, with some reviews under my belt, and orders coming in, now I’m up to $15 for 2 hours. Which puts my pay at $6 an hour.

I’m brand new to the freelance community, so I can handle $6 per hour, buuuuuut I tend to work an hour overtime so I can get good reviews. I’d love to live somewhere that I can afford to live at such a wage, but that is not the case.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to gradually increase my rates to $10 for an hour, $25 for 3 hours, and $70 for 8 hours.

I’m concerned that as I increase my rates it will eventually become difficult to get orders, and am wondering if anyone has experience doing this for hourly gigs. I know that I provide a high quality product, and high quality service. Even the increased rates are fairly low for what I provide.

What do you think, will the fiverr market-place be able to handle it?

[paulmaplesden]

My advice would be - do not price as hourly. With few exceptions, hourly pricing is almost never the right way to go with freelancing.

Instead, price your gigs as a packaged service, and don’t just offer an hourly rate, offer somethign extra. For example:

Option 1
Expert discussion, consultation and advice for one hour.
Follow up document covering key action points
$20

Option 2
Preview of your website and business
Expert discussion, consultation, and advice for two hours
Follow up document covering key action points
Follow up meeting to discuss document
$45

Option 3
Preview of your website and business
Pre-report for discussion in meeting
Expert discussion, consultation, and advice for two hours
Follow up document covering key action points
Follow up meeting to discuss document
Second follow up up meeting
$60

You get the idea. This way, it’s not just about the hourly rate, but the extras you can add.

[daviddoer]

My advice would be - do not price as hourly. With few exceptions, hourly pricing is almost never the right way to go with freelancing.

Instead, price your gigs as a packaged service, and don’t just offer an hourly rate, offer somethign extra. For example:

Option 1

Expert discussion, consultation and advice for one hour.

Follow up document covering key action points

$20

Option 2

Preview of your website and business

Expert discussion, consultation, and advice for two hours

Follow up document covering key action points

Follow up meeting to discuss document

$45

Option 3

Preview of your website and business

Pre-report for discussion in meeting

Expert discussion, consultation, and advice for two hours

Follow up document covering key action points

Follow up meeting to discuss document

Second follow up up meeting

$60

You get the idea. This way, it’s not just about the hourly rate, but the extras you can add.

Hmm… typically my research gigs go like this:

Customer: I need this type of information.

Me: I think I can get your results in x amount of time.

Sometimes, if it’s difficult to estimate, we start with a smaller package and do an add-on when it turns out to require a lot more effort.

Then I do a ton of google searches with a variety of search terms looking for every bit of valuable data that relates to the customers needs.

Mostly it’s: Hunt, Gather, Document

not sure what the extras I can offer, or how I could price this other than hourly. Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate your experience in the field.

[simplybright]

Hmm… typically my research gigs go like this:

Customer: I need this type of information.

Me: I think I can get your results in x amount of time.

Sometimes, if it’s difficult to estimate, we start with a smaller package and do an add-on when it turns out to require a lot more effort.

Then I do a ton of google searches with a variety of search terms looking for every bit of valuable data that relates to the customers needs.

Mostly it’s: Hunt, Gather, Document

not sure what the extras I can offer, or how I could price this other than hourly. Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate your experience in the field.

I’d like to note here that clients don’t need to know (or necessarily care) how much actual time it takes you to do the job (which is different from turnaround time). They just need to feel that what they’re receiving justifies the price.

I price my gigs/packages based on the average time it takes me to do an order because I have a goal amount that I want to average hourly across all my orders. I also offer a lot of “a la carte” items. This is personal information that has nothing to do with my clients. I give my clients a package price for their request and let them know what is included in the package. I guess my main point here is that the hourly information is something that is more behind-the-scenes and is related to your bottom line.

If you’re finding that you’re clients are always requesting more work than your initial quote, it would be worth it to review your previous client orders/interactions and figure out the questions you need to ask in order to give the most accurate price. Keeping a list of these questions in a word doc would be great for easy reference.

Paul’s package idea is the best way to approach the issue your having. I would suggest making your most expensive package first and include ALL the services you’re willing to offer. Then create your very basic package. Anything that’s not included between those two packages can be included under gig extras. Creating a middle package should be easy from that point since you have the other two created.

[daviddoer]

I’d like to note here that clients don’t need to know (or necessarily care) how much actual time it takes you to do the job (which is different from turnaround time). They just need to feel that what they’re receiving justifies the price.

I price my gigs/packages based on the average time it takes me to do an order because I have a goal amount that I want to average hourly across all my orders. I also offer a lot of “a la carte” items. This is personal information that has nothing to do with my clients. I give my clients a package price for their request and let them know what is included in the package. I guess my main point here is that the hourly information is something that is more behind-the-scenes and is related to your bottom line.

If you’re finding that you’re clients are always requesting more work than your initial quote, it would be worth it to review your previous client orders/interactions and figure out the questions you need to ask in order to give the most accurate price. Keeping a list of these questions in a word doc would be great for easy reference.

Paul’s package idea is the best way to approach the issue your having. I would suggest making your most expensive package first and include ALL the services you’re willing to offer. Then create your very basic package. Anything that’s not included between those two packages can be included under gig extras. Creating a middle package should be easy from that point since you have the other two created.

I guess that means I should try something like:

Simple (basic search for information)

Average (for the more involved research task)

Exhaustive (for open ended searches that could have unlimited results)

It’s not that they are asking me for extra, it’s just that it’s really hard to estimate how long it will take to find a given amount of data. It’s also that I have a very dedicated research ethic, and am not satisfied until I feel like I’ve exhausted the possibilities (and am 100% confident the customer will be satisfied)

Actually, I’ve had an overall great experience with buyers here so far.

Thanks for the feedback. I can already think of a few ways I can improve my gig descriptions.