How do I price my freelance design work?
Start from a day rate, not an hourly one: take the annual salary the work would pay in-house, divide by 100, and that's roughly your day rate including the overhead of running yourself. Quote projects as a fixed price built from days, and never send a number before you've heard the scope.
New freelancers underprice because they compare themselves to an hourly wage. Clients aren't buying hours, they're buying an outcome and the risk you take on. A fixed price for a defined scope is easier for them to approve and better for you when you get faster.
Warm leads that don't convert usually die on scope, not price. Write back with three options at three prices and let the client pick. Hop mentors who freelance run this exact conversation with mentees, with their own numbers.
From Hop mentors who've been there
“Laid off and got a job less than 4 months! I can share my journey if you need a help from layoff!”
Chuck Shin · Senior Product Designer at Microsoft AI · on their Hop profile
“I went from running my own thing for a decade to the advertising industry and from agency into in-house product design within fintech, and I've done everything in between.”
Craig Jamieson · Creative Advisor at CR—G · on their Hop profile
“When the 2020 pandemic killed my plan to move into front-end dev, I was working retail with some self-taught UI skills and no design degree. I bet on a UX certificate and spent almost two years getting rejected before landing my first role in 2023. What I took from it: your "unrelated" background isn't the liability you think it is. The years I spent reading people across a sales counter and walking them through setting up their mobile devices turned out to be user research and usability tests that I didn't even know I was doing. I can help you find and name those transferable threads instead of hiding them.”
Stephen Carroll-Keene · Product Designer at EverDriven · on their Hop profile
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