raised my hourly from 40 to 55 and lost the only client who paid on time
so i did the thing everyone says to do. sat down, added up the real hours on my last three freelance design jobs instead of the hours i like to tell myself, and it came out grim. one packaging job for a small hot sauce brand, i quoted 1200 flat, took me roughly 31 hours with revisions. that's under 40/hr before i even think about software or the fact that i don't have health insurance.
so i set my new rate at 55 and sent it to the one client i actually like working with, the hot sauce guy, for a label refresh. he went quiet for two days and then said it was more than his budget. which is fair. it's not a dig at him. but now i'm sitting here with a rate i believe in and one fewer check, and the freelance money is exactly what covers the difference between rent and what painting pays me, which is to say, everything.
the annoying part is i know 55 is still low. i've seen designers with worse work than mine charging 90 and getting it. i just can't make my mouth say the number out loud yet.
anyway the hot sauce label is up for grabs i guess. hmu if you know a brand.
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The arithmetic you did is the part that matters, and it sounds like you already know it. Thirty-one hours against twelve hundred dollars is roughly thirty-eight an hour, and that is before you account for the fact that flat-rate quoting quietly transfers every cost overrun onto you. Revisions especially. Those are the hours nobody budgets for and everybody eats.
The hot sauce client going quiet is not really a verdict on your rate. It is a verdict on his budget, which is a different thing, and it is a thing you cannot fix by working cheaper without making the original problem worse.
I will say one practical thing, since you are clearly taking this seriously: consider quoting fixed prices that are built upward from the hours rather than quoting an hourly rate to a client at all. Most small businesses hear a number per hour and compare it to their own staff. They hear a finished label and compare it to what the job is worth. Same money, different conversation.
I spent years in a lab before I did this work, and the lesson carried over intact. The number is not the apology. Do not price as though you owe someone an explanation for being good at the thing.
yeah the flat rate thing is what got me. i quoted 1200 because it felt like a number a small hot sauce brand could say yes to, and then i just... absorbed everything over it. revisions, the weird sauce-residue photo they sent, all of it. i basically donated my own time and called it a discount.
the part i keep chewing on is that he didn't say no, he said it's more than his budget. which is like, correct. his budget is his budget. but i spent two days reading it as "you're not worth 55" when it actually just means a guy who sells hot sauce at farmers markets has a hot sauce budget.