Redesign job. Every time I ask what they want the answer is a version of we will know when we see it, and the examples they send contradict each other. Budget is real, around 5k, and they are pleasant people. Fixed price feels like signing up for infinite iterations, hourly feels like asking them for a blank cheque. Is there a third option?
Add a decision-maker clause. We will know when we see it is often three people who have never been in a room together. Name one approver in the contract and require feedback as a single consolidated list.
This saved a job for me that was otherwise heading for disaster. Naming the approver changed everything about how feedback arrived.
Fixed price per phase, hourly for anything outside the phase. They always know the ceiling of the current step and you are never doing unbounded work for free. Pure hourly with an indecisive client is comfortable for you and unpleasant for them — they watch the meter and it poisons the relationship.
Also charge for concepts. Two directions included, a third is billable. That turns try it another way into a real decision rather than a free wish.
@harlan_voss · 2mo ago · 3 replies
Yes: sell them a paid discovery phase first, as its own small fixed price piece. Two weeks, maybe 800 of the 5k, output is a written direction with wireframes or a moodboard and a defined scope. Then quote the build against that document. You get paid for the part that is currently free and unbounded, they get a decision they can see before committing, and if it turns out you cannot work together you both find that out for 800 rather than 5000. It has never been refused when I frame it as reducing their risk rather than mine.
Reply
Report
@baseweight_bel · 2mo ago
How do you phrase it so it does not sound like an upsell?
Reply
Report
@harlan_voss · 2mo ago
Roughly: I could give you a number now, but I would have to price the uncertainty into it and you would be the one paying for that. Let us spend two weeks removing the uncertainty instead. That framing sells itself.
Reply
Report