[Closed] How do you price freelancing/consulting work?

You charge the going rate. You can't charge based on your own costs (unless that makes you significantly cheaper and gives you a market-edge). But then some clients won't take you seriously anyway.

Check your market and price accordingly.

It is entirely up to you if you charge an hourly rate or on a project basis but normally a given market will have a 'norm' so to charge differently from that norm may put you in a weaker position against your competitors as the client can't compare your quote against the other prices they will have asked for.

Hourly.

The maximum I can get away with and it varies between clients. - In my opinion, if you dont loose the odd job on fees / price, you are probably not charging enough.

Cheers MF, but as I said in the OP there are no other freelancers I know of to compare to so it's difficult to determine the 'going rate' (hence my question).
The work requires a PhD and considerable experience - there are salaried positions I could compare to but in that case the company doesn't have the costs associated with employing someone. Some websites suggest take the equivalent salary and x3 to cover the costs of working from home.

If it's research consultancy work, many unis provide support/guidelines for their staff doing consultancy - maybe find out the rates they charge, as it would perhaps be the competition?

Ahh sorry didn't read that bit 🙁

So everything I said is nonsense - it sounds like your skills are specialised and therefore not many people require them, but those that do would be prepared to pay lots.

So charge £Ten gazillion per hour.

🙂

equivalent salary and x3

ALMOST 'how long is a piece of string', but my time is sold at the equivalent of salary x~3.5 (office based) and I know competitors who charge at the equivalent of salary x~8. Depends on what you want to earn, how often you can pick up work, overheads, what you think you can get away with, the client.... and on and on and on.....

EDIT: factors edited following some more current calculations....

The day rate i used to get charged out at was approx 10x my salary if thats any help.

Of course I never saw any of that 😀

From experiance in IT, most freelance/consultancy roles pay in gross terms about 2-3 times the equivalent permanant role. So take the permie salary, triple it and divide by by 200 (normal amount of billed days in a year taking into account weekends, bank holidays, personal hoidays) gives an approximate daily rate to charge.

A friend (Oxford PhD in stats, lecturer in London) charges 900+vat day rate for research/consultancy if that helps. 😆

Thanks all - I'll check back with my old Uni and see what they would charge.
It seems x3 equivalent salary would be a good place to start as I don't want to price myself out.

But since you've said its primarily for one company, whatever they'll pay is a likely number.

tbh I've always thought of a number, but been prepared to compromise (ie downgrade) for a job - if 'under-occupied'...

Bird in the hand is worth a dozen in the bush.

I've always used:

The salary that you want + 10% / 1000 = hourly rate.

I always quote a lot (up to 2x) more for clients I don't want to work with.

A friend (Oxford PhD in stats, lecturer in London) charges 900+vat day rate for research/consultancy if that helps.

He's a bit cheap, I get charged out at more than that and I'm a right thickie 🙂

I think the 3 x permie thing is really down to the costs of employing the permie. You need to cover days with no work, sick pay, pension, holidays, life insurance etc. yourself so I would go higher, maybe 5x.

There is always negotiation if necessary, but it sounds like you are highly specialised and hence would expect less work for higher fees.