Freelance pricing notes

Every freelancer starts by underpricing. Not because the work is cheap, but because the unknowns are invisible at proposal time. The fix isn't charging more blindly — it's pricing the uncertainty explicitly.

Fixed scope works when the deliverable is describable in one sentence. Retainers win when the work is ongoing and trust already exists. The dangerous middle — 'fixed price, flexible scope' — is where most projects go wrong.

What changed for me: I stopped pricing pages and started pricing risk. A discovery call, a written scope, and a revision budget turned out to be worth more than any rate increase.