Setting your rate as a freelancer: don’t make these 3 common mistakes.
There are a lot of articles and resources out there teaching freelancers how to calculate their rates. But most of them say the same thing, and most of them are incomplete, leading freelancers to make mistakes they could avoid. In this article, I’ll explain what these mistakes are and why you need to work around them.
Calculating your rate: the basics
The very common method you’ll find to calculate your freelance rate is this one:
- Add up your yearly expenses to calculate how much money you need to make. That is: your salary, social security, taxes, business expenses (laptop, internet, electricity, office renting, transportation, etc). Let’s say for the example that it will add up to 60.000€ or $.
- Figure out how many hours you will work in the year.
- Divide the money by the number of hours: boom, you have an hourly rate.
While this is an accurate basis to calculate your rate, there are several elements missing here, and some elements that are completely overlooked.
