Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

You can find quite a bit of information on this topic by searching prior answers. (You don't want to listen to any advice on this topic for me... I was in business 10 years and never made much money...)

If you do a go-go search on the following:

advertising agency project billing site:marketingprofs.com/ea

You will find 20 or so discussions related to this topic.

You can also use the search question function to the above writing, but Google has much more powerful keywords for searching. Good luck.

Billing by the project is the right way to go. Don't change that. If you go to an hourly basis (however you disguise it) you're devaluing the deliverable and encouraging yourself to be inefficient. You're also going to have the clients watching the meter all the time.

There are two ways to protect yourself: The first one is to bid the project on the high side, anticipating that you're going to want to spend more time on it in order to deliver a better project. The other is to quote your project fee with a +/-20% adjustment. If the project ends up being easier/faster than you anticipated, charge the client less. They will love that. And it will make them much more understanding if you ever need to charge them a little more because the project required more time/effort.

You can also combine the two approaches. Charge 10-15% more than you think you will need, and be prepared to come in under budget. Clients LOVE paying less than they thought they'd have to.

For more on pricing strategies for a consulting or other marketing services business, see Rasputin For Hire, pages 93-97.