Debate: Should you charge by the hour or by the project for web dev work?

I started out charging $50 an hour for web development work, and it felt fair. But then I took a flat $400 project to build a simple landing page for a bakery in Denver, thinking it would take 8 hours max. Turns out, the client kept asking for tiny tweaks over 3 weeks, and I ended up spending 14 hours on it. So I made like $28 an hour on that job, which stung. On the other hand, my friend swears by per-project pricing because it helps her land bigger clients who hate hourly uncertainty. So which side do you come down on? Has per-project ever screwed you over too, or do you think hourly billing is the real trap?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela72815d ago

Go ahead and @rosepark all you want but let's be real for a second. This whole debate about hourly vs project pricing gets blown WAY out of proportion sometimes. Yeah, that bakery job sucked but it was ONE job, not a business model failure. My friend does nothing but project pricing and has gotten screwed plenty but she just shrugs and moves on. I think people spend too much time trying to find the PERFECT system when really you just need to pick one that doesn't make you miserable and learn to say no to bad clients.

milalewis15d ago

I actually think the math on that bakery job might be a little off. If you charged $400 for 14 hours, that's closer to $28 an hour, not $28 an hour? Wait, no, that's right. But the real problem wasn't hourly vs project, it was that you didn't set clear limits on revisions. A good project contract should cap those tiny tweaks at two rounds.

rosepark15d ago

Oh man, revision caps are where I used to just trust people until I got burned (like three times in a row). @milalewis you're totally right, I never thought to put a hard limit on those tiny tweaks but that would have saved me so much headache.