Threadless T-Shirts - Profile for Papaprime - Freelance designers, what's your hourly?

Papaprime aka Dann is a 27.36 year old boy, has been a member since November 22, 2005, has scored 3738 submissions, giving an average score of 2.46.

URL: http://dannmatthews.com

Jul 23 '08 by Papaprime

5 Comments

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Freelance designers, what's your hourly?

I recently lost my salaried gig due to budget cuts.

Now I'm staring down the barrel of freelance employment and all the uncertainty of paychecks that that offers.

I live in Superior, WI, but will take most of my work from the VERY nearby town of Duluth, MN.

Duluth is one of the larger cities in Minnesota besides St. Paul and Minneapolis. Because of it's "small town, but not bumpkin" status, I need to figure out what to ask for an hourly rate for freelance work.

An example of the contrasts between Duluth and the Cities would be salary.

Duluth Designers $25 - $35k
Cities Designers $35 - $80k

What do you other freelancers ask, and what's your city like so I might compare and contrast?

funkadelik_bob on Jul 23 '08 at 7:54pm

I generally dont get paid for hourly work.

I haggle a price, get the job done, then if they approve of my work, they pay me. Freelance designers dont really have a set income. If you're good and what you do, and lot's of people notice, you could be in for a bunch of money.

wotto on Jul 23 '08 at 7:59pm

I'd be flexible and haggle - don't want to price yourself out of work.

xiv on Jul 23 '08 at 8:00pm

it depends on how bad i need the monies.

so_simple on Jul 23 '08 at 8:22pm

when the chips are low, so are my rates...
when I was working in Toronto I was asking between $50 and $75 an hour (usually I don't talk about this); but I have a full time design job on top that too, so I take what I want and throw the rest to friends. %50 of the time we would work out a flat rate in advance.

Papaprime on Jul 24 '08 at 12:48am

I was asked in an interview for a possible future position what my freelance rate is in case they find some need for me before a position is made available. I told them that I haven't worked out a freelance price. So I'm just looking to get an idea.

The good news is that they say they work with about 13 designers in the area, with about 5 regulars. Chances are one of my old instructors has freelanced at some point for them, and I am going to try and contact them tomorrow. If I know the regularity of their contact with this firm and their asking price, I can figure out what I should ask for.

As is, in the interview, they asked what I'd be looking to take on salary, and I quoted about $5,000 more than they were looking to shell out. And it wasn't greed on my part, just them expecting to underpay as it would be their first in-house designer. I think I need to move.

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