Estimate/charge problem when freelancing
Wednesday, 24 July 2013 06:59![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmaksThis is a post originally written at Jun 20 2013. Moved from tumblr here.
1. I’ve just finished a fixed price freelance job which I thought would take me 2 hours, but took 8, due to third-party components problems.
2. Also, I failed to fulfill all requirements, so I can’t even charge the full price.
It seems to me, if I split a task into smaller chunks, I may be burned less. In this case, if I did 2 milestones:
* Make website screenshots one at a time (no concurrent requests) for 50% of the price.
* Many concurrent requests for other 50% of the price.
I would still fail, because I’ve overspent time on both tasks. It would also be no good to stop doing a milestone because I’ve already spent too much time doing it because of the contract with the client.
What could be done about it? Only doing tasks that only use good old known components for a fixed price? Having a 3x-4x multiplier for tasks that have new untested components seems like a good idea. Would save me in the case of the first milestone, but not in the 2nd.
The question in this case - when do you give up? I gave up when it became clear that no existing components would work without fixing them first. And that would require a lot of time. But, giving up after spending allocated time doesn’t look good to me, maybe 1.5x of allocated time?
1. I’ve just finished a fixed price freelance job which I thought would take me 2 hours, but took 8, due to third-party components problems.
2. Also, I failed to fulfill all requirements, so I can’t even charge the full price.
It seems to me, if I split a task into smaller chunks, I may be burned less. In this case, if I did 2 milestones:
* Make website screenshots one at a time (no concurrent requests) for 50% of the price.
* Many concurrent requests for other 50% of the price.
I would still fail, because I’ve overspent time on both tasks. It would also be no good to stop doing a milestone because I’ve already spent too much time doing it because of the contract with the client.
What could be done about it? Only doing tasks that only use good old known components for a fixed price? Having a 3x-4x multiplier for tasks that have new untested components seems like a good idea. Would save me in the case of the first milestone, but not in the 2nd.
The question in this case - when do you give up? I gave up when it became clear that no existing components would work without fixing them first. And that would require a lot of time. But, giving up after spending allocated time doesn’t look good to me, maybe 1.5x of allocated time?
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