How to evaluate your work

One of the most difficult questions I faced in freelancing was “How much money should I charge for this work?” The first client, by chance, turned out to be Telphin, a VoIP telephony operator, quite large in 2008. I was required to design a new version of the user account interface.

Then, in my assessment, I was guided by such concepts as “how much should I ask so that the client does not fall off?”, “how much do people generally charge for such work?”, “how much money am I willing to work for?” Then I said something like 30,000 rubles. An incredibly large amount for a student. But I did not hesitate to voice it, because I had just recently returned from a business trip to China, where I earned much more as a translator.

Now I understand that 30,000 rubles for such a task is very little. And that the client clearly understood that he was paying an inexperienced student - and was ready to take such a risk. My profession was extremely young, I had a good recommendation, but for business this money was not money at all (perhaps it was necessary to put this item at the top of the list).

In the end, everything ended well. I completed the work, received the money, the client was satisfied (satisfied, not satisfied), and I used the description of the results of that work instead of a resume for further employment in a web studio.

Then there were new projects and new assessments. But the assessment method basically remained the same for many years: ask for so much money that you wouldn’t be ashamed to work for it and so that the client wouldn’t “fall off”, afraid of the amount.

In 2019, I launched and taught a course on interface design. Part of the program was a unit on performance assessment. I laid everything out: how to estimate volumes, hours, lay down risks and take into account any little things. But when we got to the practical part of the course, and the students had to price their services, they did not use any of this knowledge, quoting prices according to the same principle that I described in the previous paragraph.

So one theory will not be enough. To begin making an adequate assessment of your work, you first need to gain practical experience. It is also advisable to be financially literate and stable so that decisions are as informed as possible.

How does job evaluation actually happen?To explain the students’ behavior (and my own), I drew a vertical line in my head and placed three dots on it. All three points are in constant motion and depend on the specific task, life circumstances, experience and many other factors.

The first point is the very bottom. An amount less than which I am not willing to accept for my work, because it would insult my dignity. It can even take negative values. For example, when I need experience in a particular job so much that I am ready to pay for it myself, if only they would give me such an opportunity.

This is followed by a point called “Decent Pay.” Having received this kind of money for work, I will be happy both in those moments when things are going easy, and in those moments when I am inundated with edits, comments, and in general everything is not going according to plan. Because decent pay, in my perception, includes some kind of financial bonus: if everything goes smoothly, it will be large, and if everything goes wrong, it will still not be zero.

The second point may fall lower and lower during trading with a client simply because I really need money here and now. Or, for example, when, after five failed transactions in a row, I decide that for the sixth one I still need to reduce the price. When things are going very well, the second point tends upward, to the third.

The third point is “The price is too high.” An amount that I am uncomfortable taking from a client, because, in my opinion, it is simply indecent. For example, ask three times more for your service than usual.

The third point is the glass ceiling. I will write about how to break through it and grow in price in one of the following chapters.

Beginners can start from such a simple scheme. With experience comes an understanding that other nuances are involved in pricing.

Risk of error in estimating work volumes. For example, a “decent price” had already been announced and everything was fine, but at some point it turned out that due to inexperience I had incorrectly determined the scope of work, deadlines and the number of potential comments. And now the named price with each new day and feedback from the client is approaching the “very bottom”, since I am already spending additional, previously unplanned time. And the closer it is to this value, the more difficult it is to complete the work.

The value of the result in the eyes of the client. The result of the work may have much more (or less) value in the eyes of the client than expected. For example, if I extract valuable information from a client's broken hard drive in fifteen minutes, he will often be happy to pay much more than my fifteen minutes are worth.

The importance of price for the client. There was a case when a client approached me with a fairly simple project. It was necessary to create a prototype of an online store. The client found me through one of my training videos on YouTube, then went to the Projectorate website, read the information there and sent an application by email. On the Projectorate website it was then said that design starts from 150,000 rubles for a prototype. However, after talking with the client, I decided to tell him the amount of 90,000 rubles, since I believed that his simple task simply could not cost more.

Later I found out: the client’s business was working so well and everything was so in order with his money that for him it made no difference whether to pay me 150,000 or 90,000. But for me there was a difference... An additional 60,000 would not have hurt me then. By the way, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that sometimes after providing a service it is important to ask clients questions like: “Are you satisfied with the price?”, “Are you satisfied with the result?”, “How could I make the process of working with me even more comfortable?” Because if I had not asked this from the client in the example above, I would never have known that he was initially guided by the 150,000 rubles stated on the website and was surprised to receive a cheaper offer.

The opposite situation also happens. When I told clients a decent price and saw from their reaction that it was too much for them. By the way, at the beginning of my freelancing journey I didn’t pay attention to this, but now I try not to work with people who invest their “last” money into an order. They take risks in this way, hoping that their project will work and “recoup” the investment, but I don’t want to be involved in this risk. The fact is that under such circumstances the client will be less calm and rational. He will not agree to change the cost if the scope of work changes. And as a result, he will not be as satisfied as a client who pays an amount that does not affect his standard of living.

The main problem is that you cannot ask the client directly how significant this or that price is for him. You can only rely on your own experience, study people’s behavior, try to order your own service from other providers in order to be in the client’s shoes and understand him better.

Now, with all that said, let me tell you what steps I take before evaluating a new project.

I request all necessary information in advance. I am not afraid to seem stupid (although before 2015 there was such a fear) and I ask questions until the task is clear to me “from” to “to”. I ask you to provide any possible documents that may be needed in your work (and if they are not available, then I offer my assistance in preparing them), links, access to statistics and analytics, test personal accounts, and so on.

When I receive this information, I make sure to check its availability. That is, if they sent me a document by email, I will open it and write to the client that I received the document. If we are talking about a login-password pair to access your personal account, I will immediately spend a minute of my time and double-check whether the received data is relevant.

I didn't do that at first. And situations arose when I received information from a client, did not check its availability, and then at the last moment, when I sat down for an assessment, I had nothing to start from. And I had to embarrass myself and send a request at an inopportune time to send the information again. Or, even worse, do not embarrass yourself and make an assessment without the necessary information. Sometimes this led to much more dire consequences...

I make sure that my vision of the result coincides with the client’s vision. To do this, I repeat the task in my own words and voice what exactly will happen as a result of its implementation. I am listing a set of documents and other artifacts that will appear in the end. I explain why they are needed and what benefits they will bring. At first I didn’t do this and became a participant in various unpleasant stories. For example, when the work is almost ready, but it turns out that the client did not want a prototype, but a design. Or when the client was confident that the functional specification was a document that was necessarily included in the design service, but this was not the case. Such “childish” mistakes disappear on their own as experience grows, because any of them brings painful and memorable consequences.

I break the task into its component parts, estimating the duration of each of them in hours. This way I get the number of hours taking into account my own understanding of the task and the fact that everything will go perfectly smoothly. Then I highlight the least clear parts of the work and discuss them separately, spending extra time on risky areas.

Further, depending on the task, I can once again increase the resulting number of hours, based on the experience of past work. With each new similar project, the probability of error will decrease (but is unlikely to ever reach zero).

Making sure that my process for completing a task is acceptable to the client. For example, at some point I began to indicate in the annex to the contracts the number of hours the client would have to spend while working with me. This happened after I took on one of the projects where the client was so busy that he was never able to communicate with me for a month. This led to me doing work without intermediate feedback, and closer to the deadline I received so many comments that I had to redo everything almost from scratch. In the contract, a line of text with the number of hours that I would require from the customer completely solved this problem.

I take the resulting hours and figure out how they can stretch across calendar days, taking into account my workload and a potential delayed start. For example, I managed to count five hours to complete a task, including a couple of negotiation sessions of an hour each. Will I be able to tell the client that the task will be ready within one day? Of course not! On the first day I will work for an hour, after which I will need to schedule a meeting with the client. I will take into account the client’s availability and workload and will allow two days for this matter. That's three in total. Then, after negotiations, I can work that same day and schedule another negotiation. That's another two days plus. Total five days. We add two days to them in case of unforeseen circumstances on both my part and the client’s. It's already seven. After this, we check our personal calendar. Do I already have any important events planned for the next month (I don’t know on what day the client will make an advance payment, after receiving which I will start working)? If they exist, then we add them too. In total, for a five-hour task, I can easily stipulate a ten-day period in the contract.

If the client can quickly interact with me, then this task can be completed within one day. Then everyone will be glad that they managed to finish it nine days faster, and will run away happy. But if I give a shorter deadline, and completely unforeseen circumstances arise that prevent me from completing the task on time, then I will lose my reputation.

So, I told you how I estimate the completion time of a particular job. What is its value based on?

What is the cost of the work based on?

Time. An estimate of the task in hours is needed in order to multiply it by the cost of the hour - the hourly tariff rate. This includes all the time spent on completing the work. Work on the contract and other accompanying documents, demonstrations, screenings, intermediate negotiations, scheduling meetings, organizing communication between several people, any of my trips necessary for work.

You need to understand that I spend all these hours and minutes in order to complete the client’s task. And if you don’t take them into account, then you can find yourself in a situation where the work itself took 30% of the time and was paid for, and I spent 70% of the time organizing and maintaining it for altruistic reasons.

Related costs. When I complete a task, I use electricity, the Internet, an office or a rented apartment, computer programs and other paid things. I pay for all this myself. And if you do not take this amount into account, it will turn out that it will be automatically deducted from the cost of my hour, significantly reducing the payment, which only seemed worthy.

Equipment depreciation. If I use a computer for work, talk on a mobile phone, or drive my car, then I do this not for myself, but to complete the client’s task. During use, all this equipment consumes its resource. And again: if I do not add this resource to the cost of an hour of work, then it automatically decreases. For example, a copywriter who bought himself an Apple laptop for 200,000 rubles can expect it to work for three years (depending on your luck and how often you use it, because it can break either immediately after the warranty period or after ten years). This means that it costs 5,500 rubles per month (we simply divided 200,000 by 36 months; we do not count inflation and other things for the sake of simplicity of the example). And this is about 185 rubles per day. If such a copywriter sells his services for 50 or 100 rubles per 1000 characters, then a significant part of the time he will work only on his laptop.

Taxes. We take the final amount and add to it from 6% to 48%. The percentage will depend on a huge number of variables that I would not like to discuss in this book. In my case, I usually add an additional 10%, working as an individual entrepreneur on a simplified basis (6% base rate, 1% to the Pension Fund, the remaining 3% - fixed payments to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, insurance, account maintenance, commission for withdrawing funds exceeding a certain amount per month).

Where does the base hourly cost come from?Several factors are at work here. Both objective and subjective. For example, the market dictates the market value of a particular service. This is an average price formed from the prices of a large number of providers of similar services. At the same time, there are such concepts as “lower limit of the market” and “upper limit of the market.” To determine the average price, it is enough to contact several providers for a similar service and see how they evaluate its implementation. In this case, we use someone else's experience.

Then, over time, your own experience appears, which will help you make adjustments. It is the accumulated knowledge of how much and how willingly we have been paid in the past. My experience told me that I was getting more clients than I could handle and that it would be a good idea to increase my price. And I increased it until supply and demand were equalized. The more experienced I became, the less dependent I was on the market price for my services.

The final step in evaluating work will be the application of increasing or decreasing factors. Some coefficients affect the timing, some affect the cost, and some affect both at once.

Increasing coefficients

Increased value of the result for the client. If I see that in the eyes of the customer the result of the work is much more expensive than in my own, I can voice a higher price so that his expectations coincide with reality. By the way, it is worth mentioning here about such services where it is important for the client to pay more in order to confirm his status in front of others or in front of himself. Sometimes men, in order to show ladies their wealth, buy the most expensive wine in a restaurant, without even understanding the brands. It's the same principle here.

Increased demand. When I had a line of clients lined up, this became a signal that I could raise the price. Sometimes such an increase led to some clients “falling off,” but new ones took their place, and my income eventually grew.

Other people's deadlines. When a client needs to complete a task very urgently and is not ready to work within the framework of my calendar, but also does not want to refuse cooperation, I can charge much more money for it. The fact is that the time for work will not be taken from other projects, but from my personal free or family hours, which in my eyes have a value that tends to infinity. If there is no such time left, I refuse this order. If such time can be obtained only by shifting deadlines on other projects, I also refuse, so as not to lose my reputation. And when there is an opportunity to work instead of walking in the forest or playing computer games, then you can significantly raise the price and agree to such conditions.

Undisciplined client. If, even before the start of cooperation, the client was late for negotiations, ignored one or more questions asked of him, promised something, but either did not keep his promise or fulfilled it late, then I immediately increase the cost. And this is not at all because I am offended and want to punish the person. On the contrary, I treat such behavior with understanding. I just know in advance that after the conclusion of the agreement the situation will only get worse. Having become my client, such a person will definitely cancel or reschedule several negotiations, delay the terms of prepayment, and will not provide me with enough information for comfortable work. All this will lead to me working longer and harder on a task than with responsible and disciplined clients. And an increase in price will compensate for this.

More than one decision maker (DM). When there is only one person on the client side who makes all decisions, he does not need to coordinate them with anyone. Such a person will quickly discuss everything, give an answer and accept the finished work. But as soon as one or more equal participants appear, the need for additional approvals arises. And this is not always easy. Sometimes someone lacks information to make a decision, sometimes they lack confidence. Political contradictions may arise. All these nuances usually increase the time it takes to complete even small stages of work, which means you can prepare for this in advance and compensate for it with additional deadlines and money. The time allocated for negotiations, in the case of two decision makers, can be safely multiplied by two. And with three it’s already four. I have had projects where up to 90% of the time was spent on conversations and approvals, and 10% on work itself.

To be fair, I note that there were also organized decision makers who pleasantly surprised me. They approached meetings responsibly, prepared in advance, were able to communicate constructively, complemented each other, touched on many subtle points, and asked more tricky and clarifying questions. All this led to better results. And maybe the stretched deadlines were worth it; with all that, the benefit from them was greater than the lost time.

Unique challenge. At first, each task was unique for me. But over the years and experience, there have been fewer and fewer of them, and today it is very rare to encounter one like this. At first, I hid my inexperience, took risks and hoped that I would cope with the task in the same way as with the others (there were few tasks, and each of them gave me the opportunity to live for some time without debt). This led to regular errors in estimating deadlines and to difficult days and weeks of work, when it felt like all the money had been spent long ago, and the task was still not completed. Each such incident provided invaluable experience at the cost of my nerves.

Today I am not afraid to appear incompetent and immediately inform the client that the task is unique to me and that more resources will be needed to complete it. Sometimes during the assessment process it becomes clear that it is so non-core that it needs to be refused. And sometimes, on the contrary, you understand that this is a great chance to gain invaluable experience, and then you can even get by with increasing the deadlines, leaving the cost at the same level.

Volume problem. If I immediately understand that the project will last for several months, then I budget for additional deadlines and costs. My experience has shown: the larger the project, the easier it is to make a mistake in its assessment, and therefore it is better to immediately lay down these risks in advance. Plus, due to its large size, any edits towards the end of the work will have an avalanche-like effect on many already closed tasks. And it turns out that everyone is already tired and wants to move on as quickly as possible, but we need to take a few steps back and, gathering our strength, correct important things. A reserve of money and deadlines will prevent burnout of the performer and provide insurance in case of unforeseen circumstances. In the case of large-scale tasks, it is always better to make a mistake by naming a larger amount. And if we manage to complete the work early, then everyone will be happy.

Reduction factors

Reduced demand. I also had an episode when, inspired by success and increased demand for my services, I raised my prices so much that most new potential clients began to refuse to work with me. The workload began to drop, and additional free time appeared. And then there was so much of it, and so little work, that prices had to be reduced. This corrected the situation, and after a couple of months everything fell into place again.

It's good if you have such experience. The situation is much worse when a freelancer is at the very beginning of his journey, he does not yet have clients, and he thinks that lowering the price is the key to success. After all, it is much more pleasant to think that a potential client refuses to cooperate solely because it is expensive for him, and not because he does not want to get involved with such a performer.

Bottom line: reduced demand may indeed be an indicator that it is time to lower prices. But you need to be careful not to confuse its cause with something else. For example, with the inability to find a sufficient number of potential clients, conduct negotiations, support transactions, and so on.

Strategic importance for portfolio or experience. Sometimes I reduced the cost for clients who had a task necessary for my professional growth. For example: the first mobile application, the first tablet application, the first interface for a street terminal. By lowering the price, I hoped to increase the likelihood of a deal. Maybe it worked. And perhaps the deals would have taken place anyway. Unfortunately, I have no way to check this. The main thing here is not to overdo it. The client can compare the price of a freelancer with the prices of other performers and ask the question: “Why is he so cheap? Just to be sure, I’ll try to work with someone more confident in their abilities!”

Common estimating mistakes

I would like to share a list of mistakes that I made myself at the beginning of my journey, and the freelancers who performed certain services for me.

Quoting a “large” amount without taking the time to actually estimate. I have more than once experienced periods when I was overwhelmed with incoming orders. Many clients wanted to start work as quickly as possible and were ready to pay right away. In total, pleasant amounts of money quickly accumulated in my accounts, I happily cleared away work debris, and incoming orders did not stop. In such conditions, I didn’t really want to waste time assessing them. And then I made a mistake for the first time. I took a quick look at one of the new projects, figured in my head that I would be doing it for about a month, and instead of a full, detailed estimate, I simply told the client the amount that was my two-month salary.

As a result, many details and nuances surfaced in the project that I did not take into account, and the work took more than three months. During this time, I spent all my energy and nerves, and even managed to let one of my clients meet deadlines, losing reputation points. In recent weeks I have been working solely on willpower, wanting only one thing: for this to all end as soon as possible.

This situation could have been avoided by making a full assessment before starting work. Then I would have immediately discovered the weak points and made no mistakes in terms and prices.

I didn’t repeat these mistakes again, but I noticed how many freelancers who worked with me made them. Most often it looked like this: the person did not understand the true scope of the task and simply named an amount slightly exceeding his monthly earnings. For some reason, few people imagine that work could suddenly last much, much longer.

Include in the price the following stages of work, which are based on the previous ones. In my case, it is impossible to immediately evaluate both the prototype and the functional specification that describes this prototype. Because if I make even a slight mistake in the scope of work on the prototype, it can significantly affect the scope of the functional specification. A good analogy would be a car service that would immediately evaluate both the car’s diagnostics and the work that would need to be done based on it. After all, until a diagnosis has been made, one can only guess about the volume of subsequent work. The only way in such a scenario not to work in the negative is to name greatly inflated prices that cover any possible risks. But the correct approach is to first take money for diagnostics, perform it, and then, based on it, evaluate all necessary further work.

Making an assessment based on someone else’s documents without making sure that they were compiled by specialists. This is especially true when working with non-professional clients, which I wrote about in one of the previous chapters. Most likely, these people will not be able to correctly set the task. In such a statement, many nuances may be missed, and terms may be used that the client himself understands incorrectly.

One time was enough for me to learn this lesson. They immediately came to me with a ready-made technical specification and offered to make an interactive prototype based on it. I agreed and already in the middle of the project I realized how much I had made a mistake in assessing the client’s expectations. By giving me a superficial and unfinished technical assignment, the client expected from me my signature elaboration and detail. This meant that with each new day of work, the original task recorded in the document changed based on my feedback. Towards the end of the project, I had to conduct a conversation about re-evaluating work, and at that time this was one of the skills that I had yet to learn. Fortunately, everything ended well.

To avoid such a situation, it was enough to draw up your own document with a design assignment, using the client’s document as a basis, and only then make an assessment.

Take on work within conditions that break the usual freelance processes. For example, a client once approached me, who was very impatient to start cooperation as soon as possible. He asked me to issue an invoice before the contract was concluded (the main thing is that the number was assigned), and also to include both design and writing of the functional specification in the estimate. And with such haste and urgency, for some reason he could not find time for additional preliminary discussions, which I urged him to do because of the questions that arose regarding the project.

As a result, even at the stage of drawing up the contract, I realized that I had made a mistake in the assessment, but it was already too late, since the invoice had been paid. Plus, in the process of work, the volume of the prototype increased, and since I immediately assessed all the stages that followed the prototype, “turnkey”, the time for their development increased several times. Having finished with this project and got out of a difficult situation, I forever vowed to work within the framework of other people’s conditions, no matter how attractive they may seem.

To avoid such a situation, it was enough to first estimate the creation of an interactive prototype, then conclude a contract, then issue an invoice. And to confront the client with the fact that I do not evaluate the entire turnkey design, since the amount of work on the next stages may vary significantly after the completion of the previous ones.

Abuse increasing and decreasing coefficients (naming an amount too high so that the client “falls off”, or too low so that he “necessarily agrees to place an order”). I overpriced once in my life. And this lesson was enough for me. I really didn’t want to work with one potential client, because from the very first negotiations he annoyed me and drove me crazy with his arrogant and reproachful attitude. Every minute of communication with him was a constant struggle with myself so as not to break down. Then one of my colleagues advised me to tell him the cost of my services so that he would definitely refuse to work with me. That's what I did. I rated his project and multiplied it by three. And the client agreed, and with surprising ease.

I learned two lessons. First: it seems that my prices were too low for many clients. Second: if you don’t want to work with a person, then make a decision not to work with him and take responsibility for this decision on yourself, and don’t make him refuse the deal.

Today I am able to immediately make it clear to a potential client what I don’t like in our communication. Many clients whom I asked, for example, not to swear in front of me, simply apologized and responded completely adequately to such a request. And if I see some kind of danger in a person, then I politely refuse to work with him in a form that does not imply that the client can change my decision. I listen to my intuition. I am guided by the principle “If it seems to me that huge problems are possible with this client, then it does not seem to me.”

The same thing happens when prices drop. A price that is too low looks suspicious. Since my provision of services takes a lot of time, the client would like not to make a mistake in choosing a contractor, so as not to lose precious days. Often money may not play the most significant role when deciding on cooperation.

Ask to pay according to the result as much as “is not a pity”. I did this experiment several times. When simpler projects came across, he offered clients to pay an arbitrary amount if they were satisfied with the result. Such an offer, like a magic spell, led to the sudden disappearance of potential clients.

When I myself began to order something from other performers, I understood perfectly why this was happening. Such freelancers created the feeling of such inexperienced specialists who could not even evaluate their work that one did not want to work with them. And it’s one thing when a performer says: “This is my first task. I've never assessed anything like this before. Please be understanding!” In this case, I understand him and do not work with him, because he could still work hard and somehow make an assessment. And it’s a completely different matter when you hear such a phrase from a seemingly experienced specialist with a rich portfolio. Here an internal contradiction arises, a feeling of some kind of deception, a desire to escape from the situation. Perhaps the freelancer took such extreme measures out of despair and a complete lack of orders. But then the client will not want to get involved with such a performer.

To be fair, I would like to note that there are services where such an approach is possible. For example, I know tour guides who offer to pay them according to the results of the excursion “as much as you don’t mind.” And they have clients. I would classify such a service as simple (when there is no need to do a preliminary assessment). Still, I’m not sure how effective this approach is compared to the traditional one.