The blog
Practical guides on rates, billable hours and what your time actually earns. Written while building CronLoom solo in Germany.
A broker's cut comes off the rate where you can see it. A direct client's cost arrives as unbilled hours you do the broker's job in. In a worked example, a broker project at 95 pays 90 per real hour, one direct client at 120 pays 100 and another pays 80. Compare per client, not per channel.
A billed-full day with four clients is not a full day of work. Twenty minutes to close one file and open the next, times the hops, is sitting nobody booked. At 8 hours billed at 90, four clients land you on an 80 floor. One multiplication puts a number on it.
A won project does not just cost the hours you deliver. It carries the proposal that won it and, through your close rate, the proposals that lost. At 4 hours per pitch and one yes in four, every win starts 16 hours behind, and a 20 hour project billed at 90 pays 50 for every hour it really took. One multiplication puts a number on it.
Not because the rate is lower. Every job carries an hour around it: the request, getting back into the project, the handover, the invoice. That hour is the same on a 2 hour fix and a 20 hour project, so it divides small jobs hardest, and one formula gives you the smallest job that still clears your floor.
Projects do not run long at random. Divide tracked hours by quoted hours on your last three finished projects and the same factor comes out each time. Multiply the next estimate by it, and set the budget to the quote so the overrun shows up at hour 24, not on the invoice.
Not because of scope. The kickoff, the access, their files and learning how they give feedback are hours nobody quoted, and they only exist because the client is new. Divide the fee by all of them, then read the client over two projects, not the first one alone.
At most the monthly fee divided by your floor rate. A fixed-price project can only go underwater once. A retainer goes underwater and then renews, which is why the month, not the project, is the unit you check.
A shorter deadline is sold as a favour. The hours do not treat it as one. Keep the fee, add the Saturday that only exists because of Friday, and you see whether the job still clears the floor.
Late payment is written about as a cash-flow problem. The part nobody counts is that chasing the money is unpaid work, it belongs to one client, and it drops that client below the rate you agreed.
A 10% discount is not 10% off. Convert the fee cut into hours at your floor rate, add the overrun the project was always going to have, and you get the number you actually agreed to.
A fixed price sets your fee, not your rate. Divide the fee by your floor rate to get the hours it can afford, then check at the halfway hour instead of at the invoice.
Revenue ranks your clients one way. Fee divided by the hours the work really took ranks them another, and the two orders rarely match. Here is how to do the division and what to do with the answer.
Your quoted hourly rate is a promise. Effective rate is fee divided by every hour the job took. The floor is the line below which a client is no longer paying you.
What counts as billable, realistic utilization for solo freelancers, and how to compute the ratio that quietly decides what you really earn per hour.
The honest trade-offs between fixed-price and hourly billing, how to compare them with your effective hourly rate, and when each model actually wins.
A practical method for raising freelance rates: find your worst-paying clients by effective rate, time the increase, send a plain email, and gain income.
A practical method to set a freelance day rate from your target hourly rate, with a premium, half-day rules and a way to check it against real tracked hours.
A practical system for tracking billable hours when you juggle several freelance clients at once, without losing revenue to forgotten timers and fuzzy estimates.
A step-by-step method to work out the freelance hourly rate you actually need to charge, based on your income goal, expenses, time off and non-billable hours.
Try the numbers yourself
Free calculators, no signup: what to charge, and what you keep.