Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

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Freelance Advice: Pricing Yourself Appropriately

One of the freelance questions I get asked most frequently is: How do I price my services? 

When going freelance or taking on contract projects, pricing yourself appropriately is critical. Your. Time. Is. Valuable. I’ve been on both sides: freelancing myself and hiring freelancers, so I feel like I can offer some advice in this arena. You can even take some of this advice and apply it to the “a prospective employer asked me ‘what is your salary expectation?’ – how do I respond?”

But first, a story…

When I first began freelancing it held a very simple goal: pay off my student debt faster. Kthx. And I did. And I learned a lot from my very first freelance gig. I went on a bid site (freelancer.com), bid on any job I thought I was even remotely qualified for, and won several contracts. One such contract was transcribing 40 hours of interviews for someone’s PhD research. I did this job for ONE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS. WHAT?! Yeah. I had no idea what to price transcription services at. This was obviously a steal. This is a period of my life that was absolute agony for me. I’m not a quitter. I did the job. I hated the job. I learned that my time was valuable. #lifelessons. I now know that, and that will never transcribe anything ever again. Never.

Cool story. That was dumb. Now get on with the advice please.

Alright, so there are several things you want to consider when pricing your services:

  • What do you want to earn?
    • Be realistic; I initially based this annual value as what I was making at my first ID role
  • Consider the things you have to pay out, such as taxes, HST (if you’re Canadian), and health care
    • The biggest mistake I see people make is pricing their services too low and only finding out when they owe a bunch of $$$ to the CRA or IRS. It can be an expensive lesson to learn.
  • Do you want project based pricing? Hourly pricing? Salary?
    • Salary is self-explanatory, but you still need to factor in the things you’ll pay out to. Hourly pricing can be good if you’re unsure of how much time you spend doing each type of task you’ll be doing. Project-based pricing is typically higher, but if you do project-based pricing you may get into an underpaid pickle if it takes you longer to complete a project than what you had quoted.

For me, as I previously explained, I initially priced my services based on the hourly breakdown of my first ID salary. I then added to that. So, let’s do a simple example:

  • Starting rate: $20/hr
  • I set aside 35% of each project for taxes, and 15% for HST, so I would add those two things (50%) and then add that to my rate – so now I’m at $30/hr.
  • Then, I add 20% to that to put aside for healthcare – now we’re at $36/hr

Now, this takes a bit of research, but I recommend you start with your provincial/state/federal tax sites to identify how much you need to pay in to taxes based on certain tax brackets. It might suck to contribute more to your tax account than necessary, but at the end of the day, it’s always nice to not have to pay out all of your tax savings vs. owing more.

The other major things to consider is: What experience do you have? How long have you been doing certain types of jobs/roles? Where do you live? These factors all play a part in pricing yourself appropriately.

Pricing yourself can be incredibly intimidating, but I’ve learned that valuing myself accordingly and confidently negotiating my pricing has more often resulted in prospective employers not batting a lash versus balking at my pricing. And if you’re being fair with your prices and still encountering prospective employers balking at your pricing…are those the employers you want to work for? For me, it’s not. There will always be more contracts. I promise you.

Resources:

  1. The eLearning Guild has an incredibly helpful calculator: 2018 Salary Calculator, and you can use this as a starting point to base your annual value according to various elements (e.g., state in which you live, education, years of experience, etc.). Another thing the eLearning Guild does is an annual salary and compensation guide – aimed at recruiters, but also helpful to peruse if you’re looking into working for yourself.
  2. Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design by Donald Clark provides a great overview.
  3. The Chapman Alliance – How Long Does it Take to Create Learning is a resource I recommend OFTEN.

Hanging Out with The eLearning Guys – Episode 32

 

I was so excited when David and Nejc reached out to me to be interviewed on their podcast, The eLearning Guys. I’ve been a listener since their first episode, and I love seeing all of the cool things they’re doing on the side.

This was super fun, so if you’re interested, hop on over and check it out (click the image below)!

E-Learning Heroes Challenge #199 – Tabs Navigation

Tonight I was feeling a little nostalgic for the E-Learning Heroes Challenges. For that reason, and the fact that David Anderson is probably going to nag me to participate more when we see each other this week (I KID!), I whipped something up in my evening wind down.

Challenge

This challenge was to create one of the most common of e-learning interactions: tabbed navigation. Every e-learning developer has created a tabbed interaction, so it’s always nice to have a repository of suggestions to consult when you feel as though you need to freshen up your development approach. This is what I love about the E-Learning Heroes Challenge recaps – sometimes my brain is too tired to think!

Method

For this tabbed interaction, I first went to Pinterest, where I stumbled upon this horizontal tab menu, and I loved the look/feel. Next, I opened Storyline to try and replicate the effect. It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough for me. I fiddled with the design size, consulted coolors.co for a colour palette, and then wrote a bunch of things about myself.

Result

Like I said, it’s not perfect, but it’s close. And at past-bedtime-o’clock, I’m happy with it.

Click Here to view the full interaction.

ATD ICE 2019: Keynote Recap: Seth Godin

When I first started freelancing, nearly 10 years ago, I consumed every Seth Godin book I could find, and I eagerly anticipated reading anything that he posted on Seth’s Blog. He was my small business sensei! When ATD announced that he was one of the keynote speakers, alongside Oprah Winfrey, I was torn. I couldn’t decide who I was most excited for…Oprah or Seth. After seeing Oprah yesterday, I can definitely say it’s both, but initially I struggled to decide.

One of my first screencasts was actually a book review of The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? To say that I’m excited to spend a bit of time with my small business sensei is an understatement.

Seth comes out and talks about how we always feel behind the eight-ball. He discusses how there is maybe a different way for us to get ahead! When we’re asked “What do we make?”, we should respond with ‘work that matters for people who care’. We tell stories!

“The essence of your work is that you make change happen. If there isn’t change then why did you even bother?” – Seth Godin (2019)

He explains how development is really different than training. Development involves showing up continually for the people we seek to change.

“Learning is something we choose to do” – Seth Godin (2019) PREACH!

We’ve learned, through a system, to hold a little bit back because we’ll always be asked for more. 16,800 hours of being trained to comply has done this (the public school system). He explains how the public school system was created to generate a world of compliant people. We’ve been taught to produce more value, more productivity…there’s no wonder why people are holding back. Your resume is a piece of paper that shows that you can comply.

Seth talks about the mindset of industry: productivity that is managed to go up, people that comply, a system of rewards. The model is “get people to listen to their boss.” The rate of change this year is the lowest we’ve seen in our lifetime because next year will be faster. Everyone is yelling and there’s too much noise. He talks about the Yoga Pant District in NYC…this is bad news for people like Lululemon, because they’re no longer the older one. There are too many competitors. The industrial model of ‘more’ is broken forever, so it’s a lot more difficult to get to move up and to the right on and org. chart.

“It’s very tempting to deny that this world is changing, but I hope that we can agree that it is.” – Seth Godin (2019)

Your job in talent development is to help people figure out what to do next…to figure out how to connect the dots. It’s not compliance; it’s something else. People forget that there are deep roots, and that is where development hangs out. It is a “long-term process to help people see.” When you are the only one, people will cross the street. They will seek you out. How can you be different? We should be paying attention to what things are worth (people, products, etc.). Seth breaks things down, task analysis style, to explain that what we make is feelings. That’s the goal. You’re not shopping for a 1/4 inch drill bit, you’re shopping for the feeling your spouse feels when they come home and you’ve hung the shelf.

We have big cultural challenges to address. He circles back to holding back, in that we hold back because we don’t want to make waves. How do you develop these individuals who hold back? We are way too hung up on compliance, how fast we can type. It turns out that real skills can be taught, and they shouldn’t be referred to as soft skills.

What we actually need is grit. We need to be gritty enough to stand up for ourselves, to fall down, skin our knees, and get up and do it again. And right now it is cheaper than ever for us to adjust…to raise your hand, speak up, and try something new. We live in an economy that is based on connection, and it is connection that creates value.

Together we create value, and this needs coordination, trust, privilege, and exchange of ideas. The foundation these four things are built upon is generosity and art. We can either go from scarcity, living smaller and smaller, or an abundance.

What’s going on in school is ‘colour inside the line’. There’s a huge difference between responsibility and authority. Responsibility is taken and authority is given. Competence is overrated. We don’t need help to create a competent workforce. We’re in a unique position because we have the Internet at our fingertips. Innovation is rewarded, and innovation is all about failing over and over until you succeed.

He discusses how training involves doing, not being lectured at. Doing allows us to explore, to fail, to experience. We need to realize that flying higher is a privilege, and we’re the most privileged people to ever live.

“Privilege is to do better, not more, but better.” – Seth Godin (2019)

Final thoughts: It was a true honour to listen to Seth Godin speak. He. Was. Incredible. A dream from this little small business dreamer, and I left his keynote swooning!