Re: BIZ: Time to Ask for Money?

[Michele Davis <michele -at- krautgrrl -dot- com>]

Bonnie,

When I take on a new project, whether from an old client or a new one, I 
tell them my hourly billable rate in our initial conversation. That 
usually weeds out people that want something for nothing, or next to 
nothing. I'm not going to say you were wrong, but my advice is to try 
and be more forthright with your rates. For example, "I'm willing to 
look at your manuscript, but my billable time is $XX/hour, would you 
still like me to take a look and offer some suggestions?"

I need a Visio diagram! Ah, too much Sarbanes-Oxley!

A YES gets "Then send me your manuscript, I'll look it over briefly and 
let you know what I think." If this then goes into another YES (for I'll 
do the project), I call or email and state that I am willing to take on 
the project and give a time estimate. Then I tell the lead that I will 
email them a contract for their perusal.

A NO in qualifying gets, "OK, well I wish you luck, if you change your 
mind, or you'd like a project bid, I could look over the manuscript for 
15 minutes and give you some feedback that would help you make a 
determination on whether we can work together or not."

Once I was editing novels for a prolific writer at a very low rate, 
mostly because I loved her books. But it started to turn into an 
albatross because I had to manually hard copy edit even though she wrote 
in Word. And she never numbered her pages! She kept on telling me that 
it was God's hand in the fact that we were working together. I finally 
raised my rates because I became frustrated and she decided not to use 
me any longer. So be it.

So, to answer your question, I'd tell him your rate, how much comp time 
you've put into it and then tell him that if he wants to proceed that 
you will bring a contract when you meet for lunch. When you give him a 
time estimate, add in the hours that you don't want to comp out and 
you'll be fine. If he doesn't want to move forward, I think it may be 
too late to ask to be paid for four hours of your time.

HTH, Michele

--
Michele
612-824-3516
www.krautgrrl.com
www.krautboy.com
and the uber empyre



Bonnie Granat wrote: