> Let's talk about pricing commissioned work on existing open source projects
I don't know if to people in your field it's all common practice, but I thought this was an excellent piece of writing, full of good advice. Thank you!
Good points, but disagree about the fixed-fee billing or whatever he is suggesting.
My suggestion is that you pre-authorize half-day billing in chunks as the engagement continues. Make it clear that if it is necessary to answer a single email or even think about the project, the engagement has continued and will be billed for another half of a day. Then make sure the amount you charge per half-day period is something you can live with. Before you start work on the next change, make sure they have paid for the existing bill, then get them to authorize another X half-days of engagement. Don't let them pre-authorize any more than you are willing to lose at one time, based on the amount of evidence for trust and your risk tolerance.
The initial requirements analysis and discussion session is the first deliverable which you charge for, even if it is just in a chat room.
Yeah, the whole article seems centered around "I don't do hourly billing" and all of the reasons (to me) actually read like reasons to do hourly billing.
For example: it's easy for someone to be a few minutes late to a meeting, then get an unexpected "emergency", then come back a little later than expected, and then after the meeting they remember something important and put it in a short email. So in a case like that, you might technically have only been talking to them off and on for an hour, but really it ended up taking most of your morning. By leaving it as big chunks like that and clarifying that is how it is up front, there can't be any dispute about how that sort of thing gets billed.
Also, it makes it less likely to get clients who are trying to milk every penny out of budgets. Which is good because that usually means the budget isn't really adequate.
Also I don't take a bunch of simple jobs. I take one or two challenging projects at a time. I don't want to encourage people to keep popping in and out of my schedule with little nagging requests.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 25.4 ms ] threadI don't know if to people in your field it's all common practice, but I thought this was an excellent piece of writing, full of good advice. Thank you!
My suggestion is that you pre-authorize half-day billing in chunks as the engagement continues. Make it clear that if it is necessary to answer a single email or even think about the project, the engagement has continued and will be billed for another half of a day. Then make sure the amount you charge per half-day period is something you can live with. Before you start work on the next change, make sure they have paid for the existing bill, then get them to authorize another X half-days of engagement. Don't let them pre-authorize any more than you are willing to lose at one time, based on the amount of evidence for trust and your risk tolerance.
The initial requirements analysis and discussion session is the first deliverable which you charge for, even if it is just in a chat room.
Why do you do half-days instead of hours?
Also, it makes it less likely to get clients who are trying to milk every penny out of budgets. Which is good because that usually means the budget isn't really adequate.
Also I don't take a bunch of simple jobs. I take one or two challenging projects at a time. I don't want to encourage people to keep popping in and out of my schedule with little nagging requests.