Brief 03

Brief 03

Pricing a short engagement

If you do this kind of work only now and then, you may not have a published rate, and you should not invent one on the spot to sound established. Price the job in front of you, in writing, after you have a scope.

Start with the hours you honestly think it will take, including the meeting, the writing, and the time you will spend waiting for papers. Then add a margin for the almost certain second conversation. If you cannot estimate the hours, the scope is not clear enough to price. Go back to Brief 01.

This site does not publish "market rates." Those numbers go stale and they vary by city, language and subject. What you can do is be plain: a fixed fee for a defined output, or an hourly fee with a cap. Avoid open-ended hourly work with no cap unless you both like uncertainty.

Money around the edges

Say whether expenses (travel, a paid record, a translation) are included. Say when you invoice and when you expect to be paid. If you need a deposit before you start, write that into the scope rather than mentioning it after you have already begun.

If the other person is a friend, you can still write the number down. Unspoken favours are how short jobs become long ones. If you choose to do the work at no charge, write that down too, along with the same stop date you would have used if you were billing.