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Studio owners keep lumping flat rates and hourly together, and the gap is bigger than I thought
I was talking to two studio owners in Cleveland last month about how they bill clients, and they both said they charge "a flat rate" like it meant the same thing. The first one quoted a logo project at $1,800 no matter what, and wrapped it in 11 days. The second one quoted $1,800 but it was really $95 an hour with a 19 hour cap, and that job stretched to 34 days with four rounds of changes. Same number on the invoice, two totally different studios. Side A says flat rates keep clients calm and you eat the extra hours as a lesson. Side B says hourly makes the client think twice before asking for round five. I think the flat rate people are quietly losing money and the hourly people are quietly losing clients, so neither one is clean. Where does your studio land on this, and did you ever switch after a job went way over?
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angela2042d ago
Watch the revision requests, not the invoice. Both studios are selling the same thing, time, but one is hiding the cost inside the quote and the other is showing it up front. Clients don't get mad about money, they get mad about surprises. Side A's client feels calm because the price never moves even when the work does, and Side B's client starts guarding their hours like it's a phone plan. Flip the model where it counts: quote flat for the parts you can scope tight, like the first pass, and hourly for the rounds after that, so the client sees exactly when the meter starts running. That way nobody eats 15 free hours and nobody feels nickel and dimed from the first email.
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