What to legitimately charge clients for [closed]

Question

I'm not talking about fixed price jobs, they're fairly straightforward. But I'm on about an hourly rate project, my question specifically relates to what to charge for.

If I have an IE/CSS issue that takes me an hour of scouring CSS to fix, is that chargeable? If I decide to use a really cool jQuery animation on their site but I need to get to grips with using it, do I charge them for the experimenting I do with the animation.

Do you charge customers for something that they ask for, that you don't know about and therefore need to spend time learning?

It's a grey area as far as I'm concerned and not clearly outlined in quotes (probably because not many clients would be happy to pay for your screw-up/learning).

What's the concensus on this?

Answer 1

As a web developer myself who has done pricing mechanisms like this, I usually charge a little less as a general rule to keep customers happy and coming back as well as spreading the word about me. You really shouldn't think about charging for as much as you can until you have more customers than you can handle.

Having said this, it really all depends on the circumstances surrounding your questions.

• If i have an IE/CSS issue that takes me an hour of scouring CSS to fix, is that chargeable?

Is this "issue" a bug in your coding? If so, you are obligated to fix your bugs at no additional charge. Or is this "issue" adding in a feature you really didn't know how to add in before starting your project? If so, I still wouldn't charge anything because you learned something from the experience and will be able to do it easily for your next customer. It's your fault that it took you an irregular amount of time to do, not your customer.

• If i decide to use a really cool jQuery animation on their site but i need to get to grips with using it, do i charge them for the experimenting i do with the animation. Do you charge customers for something that they ask for, that you dont know about and therefore need to spend time learning

Like I said for the first bullet, I personally wouldn't charge them for this since you learned something from this. Besides, the jQuery animation was your idea, not your customers. Unless you specifically told them prior to hiring that it would cost extra for you to do this because it is something that you do not normally do, it's not appropriate to charge extra for it in my opinion.

Based on your questions I would strongly recommend trying to agree on a price prior to creating your customers website; Even if it's just a price per hour. If they ask for additional features as you develop it then that is one of the few valid excuses to charge extra. Remember that your customer is paying you so that you can perform a service you enjoy doing and you are not trapped washing dishes to make money. If you treat them poorly and try to get as much out of them as you can they will figure it out and they will look elsewhere.

I hope this helps. Good luck down the road!

Answer 2

As an independant contractor, you should make sure your hourly rate is high enough to account for time you need to spend not directly related to a project, this includes learning time as well as accounting, marketing, proposal devlopment, bug fixes for delivered products and other indirect tasks. So you indirectly charge for these things not charge by the hour. Your hourly rate should assume you don't work 40 hours a week at chargeable tasks (6 hours a day is a pretty standard cost estimating number), so plan your hourly rate so you can live on charging 6 hours a day 5 days a week directly to customers. You may charge more in any given week, but you don't want to be unable to meet your personal living expenses because you had a week when you did less.

As to the specifics of what you charge for, that depends on what your contract has as the spec. If you have contracted to do something that will include a learning piece and the customer is aware that as part of the project you will be learing how to do something, then feel free to directly charge for it. If you decided on your own to learn that new cool tool rather than doing something the way you already know how to do it, then consider that learning as indirect work. Same with bug fixes, if you have not yet delivered a product, testing andbug fixes are generally included in your orginal time estimate. Fix bugs on an existing product as indirect work unless the customer has specifically contracted with you to do those changes.

Answer 3

Strangely enough I think it depends on how much you are charging per hour. If you ask for $120/hr I would expect that everything you do creates an immediate and beneficial result; if you are charging $50/hr that means there is a chance they will have to pay for trial/error and learning. In the end it is up to your own discretion - if you learned something you can apply somewhere else, just take it as a "business expense"; if you learned something because that client asked you for some oddball feature then it is fair to ask for them to pay for R&D.

Answer 4

Charge for what you know, not what you need to learn.

You wouldn't expect the mechanic to learn how to rebuild your engine and charge you for it would you?

Answer 5

Your customers have to pay for your education and training one way or another, otherwise your business is not sustainable in the long run. The questions is whether time spent researching should be specified as hours on the bill, or rather should be covered by a higher hourly rate which finances non-billable hours spent on research and training.

I would say it depends on if the time spent researching is very specific for the project at hand (i.e. you wouldn't need to research this if it wasn't for this specific project), or if you expect the learning to be broadly applicable to many projects in the future.