Making a living as a freelance instructional designer can be challenging, especially when it comes to negotiating new projects.
Depending on the health of your sales pipeline, you may be te...
Published 9 years ago
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Great article, thanks! But I am dismayed to see we, as eLearning developers, aren't pricing our work as valued work. $25/hour for project management? Your plumber charges triple that rate to unclog your toilet. $50/hour for development? Your auto dealership charges more than that rate to change your windshield wipers. I've had the misfortune of seeing what some big corporate eLearning vendors charge for this type of work, and we're talking $200 an hour (!!!). Sure, freelancers can't get into those sweet levels of corporate insider arrangements, but $25 an hour? Good luck making a living after paying your self-employment taxes, your skyrocketing health insurance costs, your unpaid marketing time, your software and hardware costs, and on and on and on.
Hey, I get it, we want to price our work to the point we can get work. But if everyone is racing to the bottom on pricing, no one will survive. How will anyone ever consider us as instructional designers as professional specialists if we don't price our work like professional specialists? We have a rare skill that's developed over countless hours of study and experience and we need to price our services accordingly!!!
Hey, I get it, we want to price our work to the point we can get work. But if everyone is racing to the bottom on pricing, no one will survive. How will anyone ever consider us as instructional designers as professional specialists if we don't price our work like professional specialists? We have a rare skill that's developed over countless hours of study and experience and we need to price our services accordingly!!!
- Chris,
You make some excellent points and I agree.
Note: If you look closely, you will see that these are sample numbers. They are not meant to be "industry standard" rates. I just used them to show calculations in the spreadsheet.
With that being said, I do see a lot of people charging $20-$30 per hour which I think is sad. I've even seen some overseas "e-learning designers" offering to create courses for what calculates out to be $10/hour. If you do that enough, you will go out of business and/or burn out.
I'm a strong advocate of encouraging people to charge competitive rates in the industry as doing anything less devalues what we bring to a business transaction. Of course, you have to have the knowledge/skills to deliver that value as well. That's why I encourage people in this article to know their value.
It's great to be a creative in the field of eLearning but you also need to be business savvy as well. It starts with knowing your value, being a good estimator of what things cost and knowing how to price your work competitively.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Richard