The pros and cons of selling yourself by the hour

Earlier in the week I found this article on Medium entitled "What to charge as a freelancer: does value-based pricing live up to the hype?"

You can read it here - https://medium.com/free-code-camp/what-to-charge-as-a-freelancer-does-value-based-pricing-live-up-to-the-hype-1af1d4d88ef7

It's a really interesting take on the challenges freelancers face when it comes to pricing.

What Benek talks about applies to most people in the service industry, particularly if you do work that can't always be easily packaged and defined.

Creative work.

In summary, Benek says hourly pricing is the easiest way to go because everyone does it. Customers understand it and there's a level of clarity that comes from "you pay for what you use".

However, this can also mean that you either count every minute you work or you lose out by doing some work for free.

Hourly based pricing can also put you into the commoditised category of "selling time". Everyone can sell time and so it's easy for customers to go for the cheapest rate.

Another challenge with hourly based pricing is there are only so many hours in the day and so your income has a natural ceiling.

What are the alternatives?

Project based and value based.

But they also have their pros and cons.

Listen to this episode as Ben and I explore the idea of "selling our time". It's the first part for a 3 episode series. The next episode will be about pricing projects.