how-to-be-a-rockstar-freelancer

101 In reality, every hour you work will accompany an hour of nonbillable work such as accounting, client liaison, searching for work, marketing yourself and other duties. Plus you also need to consider time you are sick, time you have taken for holidays and time when work is quiet.

When making these calculations, assume you will bill less than you would hope.

6. Divide costs by hours Finally divide your costs by your hours.

So for example if you worked out that you could bill: (52 weeks – 4 weeks holiday – 1 week sick time) x 5.5 days a week x 4 billable hours a day = 47 x 5.5 x 4 = 1034 billable hours and you had $58,000 worth of costs. Then your break-even hourly rate is: $58,000 / 1034 hours = $56 per hour Remember this value is just the START of your calculations to work out your hourly rate. In the next section we will look at other factors that should affect your decision.

FreelanceSwitch has a freely available rates calculator you can use on to help you along with this process. You can find it at http:// freelanceswitch.com/rates