Hi all... If someone is new to the freelance design market and he or she would like to get some reference on how to charge the client, where can they get the reference from? Any website to refer? Thanks for your kind help ya.

no such reference/formulation..example..a logo design..how to charge a client?..some says..based it on the hours u spend?...then how much is an hour's worth of your time?..u might spend an hour on a simple logo..but u think it looks damn cool..doesnt mean u gonna charge them peanuts..right?...so charging by hourly
only works for certain cases..maybe u can start from your own judgement..base on the size of the company (local..international)..your involvement in their future business..maybe tie the logo cost with other freebies like letterheads/invoicing/namecards..give a package deal...then lump up the sum if you decide to charge a bigger amount..advertising/design is a free market with free and wide endless invisible boundaries..muchless nowadays its not about how good your design is..more or less..its about who u know in the companies...and who wants a piece of the action...*wink wink...best is to try to get some inside info from the client previous charges by other design company...then see if its a reasonable billing...if u got no way to do that then i guess i gotto apologize that i answered your question with another question.

Alright thanks for your insight sharing. I am wondering how we can get the inside info from the client like how they have been charged by other companies?

Don't look and compare with other company and pricing, charge base on your own research and understanding of availability. If every furniture price is base on ikea you will tie down your rate with over amount of work that you will never be able to finish.

This field isn't really regulated at all, your focus is to deliver quality work for the price you demand. If you are afraid you might set the price too high or too low then go on fiverr open your own account and set your price there, base on your price you will know roughly one month how many customer at what price and once you find a sweet spot you can then set that as your base for charging locals. Any client asking for a lowball price is just asking for college su*kers to do immigrant work, skip those kind of client.

One thing I learn from local customer is generally for those who don't care about brand want it as cheap as possible, those who ask for anything extra have that intention to ask something more for less and big company will bully you whenever they can.

A key note is to never give or pass your stock work (from photoshop) to your client even if they tell you they normally get a copy of the psd file. Because that is the only legal binding of your work identifying that you are the creator, and if they have a copy of that before any agreement made they can sue you claiming you somehow stole a copy of their work. Only pass JPEG and watermark them if they are just samples and not the final product.

My advice is never afraid to ask for a price deem decent, if your client say "but the other guy quote me 10% of your cost only" then ask him to give that project to the other guy, because at the end of the day if its true that someone willing to accept at that price its their time spend, not yours. I personally would give a fair bid of warning to those that approach me with those kind of talk, which is telling them that I would charge x3 the price I ask for if he comes back with the same project.

My rate is personalized base on my current net work of customers.

Work that isn't register as brand range 300 - 500

Work that require registration usually starts with 3k -8k.

If you are working on a company's brand I suggest you research on the law and requirement for digital as well as business registration rule and how they work first. Otherwise if you made something that clash with existing market brand you will have a mess on your hands.

I'm also looking for a freelance designer for business branding. May be u can share with me once u got the price?

The most general way of pricing yourself is by estimating how many hours you'll be working on the project, then factor in costs of material, or travel, or any other miscellaneous costs.

may i know how much roughly you will charged by 1 hour? just for my reference only for next time i charge on customers, thanks

You should maybe check Fivers there are a lot of freelancers there who'd help

Really useful info bro. Appreciated it very much!
Do you mean we never give the original source files like PSD to AI file even though they have settled the full amount of money?

If they have paid for the full rights including your workflow of course you have to hand them over, if they only want a picture or a poster out from your work from a jpeg file of course they are only getting jpeg files and not your psd file.

Just think of it like art. If you paint and make one its your original main copy. That's expensive base on your fame and worth. If you take picture of your paintings and print them to sell that is cheap, because that's a copy of your original, not the original.

PSD = original work
JPEG = your printed work

You can't let client who insist on getting your psd files to get away paying jpeg price. You have to state that very clear from the beginning to make sure they understand what they are paying for.

If you play with fiverr you will know, most of them have 3 tiers of payment, each tier offer different package, and majority of them don't give you psd or AI file on basic. They are mostly given if you pay premium.

You can if you want to, just remember, when they own your psd files they can use them to modify however they want. If you are generous and your design is simple and not complex you could just past them as good will. Just remember that once its fully own by them you have no rights to claim anything from them. And if you are a freelance not working with a company that means if they decide to pass them to school kids to manipulate your work to prolong the usage will effectively eliminate their need to seek you for any future project.

there is no freelance board where everyone can refer to for rates.
perhaps it is just not as well regulated in Malaysia in comparison to other more developed countries like US/UK.

I've heard before that people use their ideal monthly salary, and divide it by days of work to get the daily rate. Then determine how many hours you would put in a day, you will get the hourly rate.

For example:
RM7000 (ideal salary as of now)
7000/22 = RM318 per day.

Working hours per day is 5 hours.
RM318/5 = RM63.6 per hour.

Please note that it is not accurate but at least you have a benchmark to refer to if you don't have ANY figure in mind on how the rates work. There is still some mark up to do for when the job well is dry.

Hope it helps.

Agreed with the above poster, you're best off looking at freelance sites and playing by ear, each country is different and has different charges.

This idea is great. Next time i can try this method, thanks for sharing ya

hey man I suggest you watching this video
it will change your life (it changed mine for good)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKXZ7t_RiOE


This post has been edited by Gmruleme: Dec 7 2020, 11:48 PM