It’s a question as old as freelancing itself. How much do I charge my potential client? Too much and you risk not getting the job. Too little and you risk a lot of things: looking low-end, not getting enough to cover your time and costs, dooming future jobs to similar low rates…

There’s no hard and fast formula to graphic design rates, but it can be really helpful to know what other designers charge. HOW magazine recently published a survey on designers’ hourly rates that sheds a lot of light on this subject.

One particularly interesting point in the survey is that, no matter where you are in the country, the average hourly rate is $68-74. I don’t have any older stats on designers’ rates, but I think this survey goes to show that location is no longer an issue when choosing your rates. Perhaps if you live in New York on California you would charge more because of your higher cost of living, but your clients can simply seek designers from the Midwest instead. Consistent rates nationwide, I believe, represent the Internet’s influence on design job selection.

Another point in HOW’s survey to consider is that 82% of designers surveyed do not share their hourly rate with their clients. They instead opt for quoting entire job rates. As some participants noted, an hourly rate can scare of a client off. And if that quoted job is fair, you have an incentive to work harder and faster on it because that would mean more profit.

There are some helpful links at the bottom of HOW’s article to other information on charging for your work, and a “Webinar” about the topic.

This is all great for graphic designers, but web design jobs can add an extra layer of complexity to the pricing process.

In addition to charging for the design, you may also need to charge for programming special applications or hiring programming or QA help. In my experience, this is a tough thing for non-web savvy clients to understand because it is the “behind the scenes” stuff that they have trouble seeing or quantifying. Your ability to explain the importance of what all that code is for will help clients understand the need for additional charges.

You may need to train the client in how to update the website him or herself. This, however, is usually a simple added charge—and if it’s too much work for too little reward for you, you can create a training manual that would apply to any site you build, and quickly customize it for your client.

For graphic design or web design, the best rule for setting rates is to be honest about your costs as well as the level of your abilities. A quality, experienced designer should never charge so little that it undermines the value of his or her work, just as a newbie designer should never overcharge just to look more upscale or make a quick profit. Do your research, and do work that you are proud of and makes your clients feel that they got a fair deal.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Design Careers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.