What are normal freelance rates?
greentooth
Hello everybody 
Someone contacted me saying they are interested in hiring me for a freelance job which is great But they asked me what my rates are and I have no Idea what normal rates are in the industry. I've never done a freelance gig before but I'm confident in my ability to do the job but I have no idea what a normal rate is. Im not a greedy person Im just happy to finally get my foot in the door but I really need help figuring out what my rate should be. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Someone contacted me saying they are interested in hiring me for a freelance job which is great
But they asked me what my rates are and I have no Idea what normal rates are in the industry. I've never done a freelance gig before but I'm confident in my ability to do the job but I have no idea what a normal rate is. Im not a greedy person Im just happy to finally get my foot in the door but I really need help figuring out what my rate should be. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Replies
Take a look through these. They should be useful.
take into account, how long the job goes for, how hard you'll have to work (will you be working 24/7 or 9/5? how experienced you are and what you lose by not taking the job (being unavailable for other work) or what you might gain (working with a top notch team of experts to help you raise your game).
And be aware of two points:
1) if you quote high, you will be expected to deliver at that rate, so if you're a junior askign to be paid a mid level rate you run the risk of leaving them thinking you were a 'bad mid' rather than a 'kick ass junior', which may affect them offering further work.
2) conversely, keep in mind that the employer will be thinking about cost savings so may well argue your rate down.
I know you're ideally wanting a base starting point and hopefully someone here can suggest one (more likely if you can post some work for an honest critique of your level) but i think it's as if not more valuable to know how to assess rates.
as an example a friend of mine interviewed for a job in a much more remote location than he was living, and the employer argued they couldn't match the NYC rates but guaranteed a higher quality of life in the smaller city and that the money would go further.
Which is all well and good except it was a three month contract, he was already locked into a 6month tenancy in NYC. He wasn't going to make money, only lose it and had to assess whether hed end up in a position to make back that shortfall after the contract ended by being more attractive to another employer because of that studios reputation.
Some people seem to charge by project. Like, $50 or $200 base pay + $5 or $15 per 1,000 tris or something. Some finished models could cost from a few hundreds bucks to a few grands, depending on the quality.
Some go by hours or by (8 hrs)days. Some charge $150 a day, while some charge $300 a day.
It's crazy.
I'd be able to make a decent 6k character much faster than a decent 2k character, for example.
As noted above, you rate depends on a lot of factors, so it's hard to give anyone a certain number to use. What's your cost of living? What taxes and debts do you have to pay off? What are your equipment and software costs? etc.
I'd say you could charge more like $37 an hour. But be willing to adjust that down or up depending on the client. Try to get a feel for what their budget is, it never hurts to ask.
Some more info here
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Freelance#Freelance_Rates
My freelance rates fluctuate, from 37 to 75. The lowest one was a couple years ago, I wasn't getting much work then so I took it because it was steady work, and I was teaching so I had some extra time. My current clients are each at different rates, 42/60/75 per hour, and I still do some work now and then for the 37 client.
So yeah, it's not a set thing. Anyhow that link should help.
Also, consider that you are part of a scalable labor force. The company hiring you only needs to pay you while they have a specific task for you and they don't have to pay benefits or social security. Even if you are charging a lot more per hour, there is an enormous savings compared to hiring someone under FTE status.
Software
Hardware
Software/hardware support
Taxes (this is a lot)
Insurance (Health, eye, dental)
Downtime between jobs (you gotta pay yourself even when there isn't work)
Savings (Most jobs give you a 401k, give yourself one)
Vacation time (Pay yourself enough to afford vacations)
Time spent looking for more work
Time spent working with clients outside of 3d art
Lawyer (Gotta make sure contracts protect you)
Accountant/Tax Accountant (Gotta make sure you are deducting everything you can and paying taxes, running your own business is hard)
Time spent training/researching outside of clients
Costs of setting up a business (Make an LLC so you don't get sued for everything you have)
If you were an employee for a business, they are paying for these things directly or indirectly, so they might be paying a Jr $25-30 an hour, but they are spending more like $40+ on them.
That said, part of the equation is speed. If you are delivering the quality of character in your portfolio, and doing it at a reasonable speed, then charge more.
If it takes you a super long time to produce those results though, then its not so reasonable.
If you're really unsure of where you stand on the speed-scale, you might put together a fixed quote for the whole character.
agreed, don't undersell yourself
A) your speed. your quality is great but if your new to this industry it might take you twice as long or longer than a seasoned artist to get a model done
again your stuff looks good, so Im not trying to knock you as an artist, just trying to illuminate other possible considerations
Good luck
You could try 30$ per hr or 250$ and see what they say, but make sure you do the work and at a reasonable time. You want to build a good relationship, so they can potentially hire you again.
I have to disagree. I think a fixed price is never better. When you bill for your time, your clients will respect your time.
+1
Of course your clients pay you to be in business, how else should this work? If you are living in L.A. you NEED to charge a different rate than someone living in eastern europe.
Uh, they can't.
I mean, they would have to have you under surveillance to know for sure...
Yeah, but time estimates don't change much in terms of cheating or being accused of cheating. Hypothetically speaking you could never exceed the max estimated time and still cheat.
It's mostly based on trust, if client thinks you're cheating then I bet he just won't hire you again, regardless of whether he's right or not.
Personally I just tend to explain right away what caused some asset to take longer than usual to make, so that client knows what's going on.
of course you don't put it on your clients invoice, but all these things (insurances, software, hardware, taxes, cost of living, how much you want to set aside, how good you are, how experienced and so on) will be reflected in your daily rate. simple as that.
VAT is highly different between countries, but your local income tax has influence on what you will keep in the end from what you make, those things MUST be taken care of with your daily or hourly rate.
And yes, again, this never shows up on your invoice, obviously.
I would never sign a contract where I was paid hourly or on a day rate but then also somehow required to work on a per asset rate. Get paid for your time.
Time estimate * rate = per asset rate. In most cases, you'll be bidding against other artists for a job, and each artist will give their hourly/day rate, and a time estimate. So you're bidding a per-asset price and most clients will give that number heavy consideration when picking an artist.
If you're lucky enough to find regular work with a client that allows you to bill hourly thats awesome, but honestly I would liken that more to being an offsite employee rather than a typical contractor.
If you are billing daily/hourly and constantly overshooting your initial estimates, chances are you won't be working for that client very long, so even then you're essentially working on a per asset rate even if thats not technically how the contract is written.
The flip side to working with per-asset rates is that if you're really fast, you can make decent money by delivering faster than your estimates, or by working multiple jobs at once. Of course, you can get stuck with a bad client who either doesn't know what they want and keeps changing the design, or who is anal retentive about revisions and makes an unreasonable amount of change requests, so its a risk/reward thing everyone should weigh themselves.
The indecisive client problem can be dealt with by using smart contracts, eg, charging extra for changes requested after a stage (often broken down into high, low, textures, etc) has been approved which requires the artist to go back a stage, charging extra for revisions past a certain amount, incentivising prompt delivery of feedback, etc.
The number he gave as an example was $150/day but he mentioned he makes a lot more than that.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Freelance#Freelance_Rates