The Agony of the Estimate

Coming up with project estimates (and waiting for the client’s response) might be one of the toughest things about freelancing.

How do you know how long a job’s going to take? How do you know what to charge? And then how should you present it to the client – hourly, per word, per page, flat fee?

It seems like the whole process should be a matter of logic and math, but in the real world our emotions kick in.

When you want a job badly enough, you start to second-guess everything: “should I really charge this much? what if he thinks it’s way too much? what if she’s insulted that I even asked for this much? what if I’m undercharging? what if the client thinks my work must be crap if I’m charging this little?” And so on and so forth.

It gets even worse when you finally decide on a number, send it to the prospective client, and hear nothing. For days.

“Oh no,” you think, “this person thinks I’m an idiot. She’s never going to hire me, and she’s going to tell all of her friends that I have no clue what I’m doing. I’m never going to work again.” Or maybe that’s just me.

If you find yourself succumbing to these kinds of thoughts, take heart. There is a way out.

You have to remember that this is business. It’s not personal. It sure feels personal when you’re a one-woman (or one-man) shop, and it’s your name on the letterhead. It feels even more personal when you’re marketing to people you’ve met on Twitter or Facebook, and you have a friendly relationship with them already.

But in the end, when prospective clients are deciding whether to hire you or not, it’s a business decision.

They have to decide whether they will get the best value from you or from someone else. While personal feelings may come into play (who wants to work with someone they can’t stand?), they’re not usually the deciding factor.

Instead of getting caught up in the “OMG, what did I do, I should have asked for less/more, I should have said this/that, etc.,” try to think more like a business owner and less like the creative spirit you probably are.

Don’t agonize over every estimate – look at every estimate (and response) as a piece of data, compile the data over time, and use it to build your business. As you gather more data, you will start to figure out what works best for you and you will get better results.

The key to this strategy is that you must have a lot of estimates going out the door.

If you only have one potential project, it’s going to seem like the end of the world if you don’t get the job. If you have 10 or 15 estimates going out, it’s more of a numbers game. I think you can look at things a little more objectively when you’re not pinning all of your hopes on one gig.

What do you think?

photo credit: whatmegsaid