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Design Hireling: Pricing Models
# Filthy lucre. A designer's life.
What do you charge for your work? How do you get paid? What's your rate? These are the questions I whisper to myself while exporting files and writing emails. The answer? Not enough, too late, and too low. I criminally undervalue my work. The perk and curse of having a full-time job—I treat Freelance Me like a miserable little homunculi. You will do the work for dirt cheap and _you will like it._
Massive caveat going in—today's article is for me. Follow along if you like. Do as I say, not as I do. You know the drill.
## What's my goal for pricing?
Allow me to don my mercenary persona. The most important thing for pricing is to make my life better. Ideally better than the average coder, insurance salesman, and—if possible—consultant. It's a tall order, but thankfully with a meager pay and a clean soul, I think we can scrape it.
The goal of pricing is to:
* **_Make enough to live._** Not survive. I can survive with a shopping cart and tarp. I want to live in a house with book shelves and a fridge redundancy.
* **_Live more than I work._** No more than 50 hours a week. Ideally, I'm working so few hours, my neighbors start to wonder if I'm Stephen King's kid.
* **_Design cooler stuff._** It's unintuitive, but the really cool clients and projects pay a premium for people that cost an arm and leg. They hate having limbs!
These things mean one thing—value pricing. Do not charge people for the cost of your time and tools, but the value it brings to their project, business, game, clout, soul, etc. Frankly, whatever the famous designers say about value to clients is kayfabe. It's about value _to_ _you._ Clients either pay or kick rocks.
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# What are the different pricing models?
They keep inventing new ways to get paid (most of them to get paid less). There are at least three worth knowing as a freelance designer in games: hourly pricing, unit pricing, and flat rate pricing.
### Hourly Pricing
Hourly pricing is when you charge people for your time. The most common increment is hourly, but in advertising I know people with day rates. It depends on the company and business. In creative advertising, you spend a lot of time sitting on your hands waiting for client feedback, so agencies buy out your day. Thankfully, we're focused on rpgs, where the illogical and mad spend their energy on monsters and collecting new blackletter fonts.
It's a good method when the project scope (what you're being paid to do) is fuzzy. A common predicament in bigger offices. If it's going to happen anywhere in rpgs, it'll be in the Isengard Orc Pits of Hasbro. When working with smaller companies and creators, the pricing method is usually flexible.
**Pros:**
* **_Every hour is golden, baby._ **It doesn't matter if the client changes their mind, the project runs over budget, or the game never materializes. The hours you work are the hours you charge and get paid for.
* **_Everyone understands hourly._ **It's what the guys and gals working at the Ford Motor Company are doing right now (while singing, surely). No one is going to be confused by a contract with an hourly rate in it.
**Cons:**
* **_Speed is incentivized._ **Clients want their art, logos, and layout yesterday. When you charge hourly, you're pouring gasoline on a fire that's already crisping your doorstep. I hate negotiating timelines with coupon clippers.
* **_Payment chasing is more frequent_. **Charging hourly doesn't mean billing hourly, which means you're vulnerable to getting stiffed. The good news: most clients, especially rpg clients, are sweethearts. It's the no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing clients who see hourly rates as a license to steal.
* **_Forecasting hours can be awkward._** You constantly have to update the client so they're not surprised by the bill. And then they're surprised by it anyway. Especially when all they did was change everything last minute—why should that change the time you need?
### Unit Pricing
This is the one everyone in rpgs knows. Being charged by the word or page. It's a great way to get paid for your work and not your time—so if you're efficient, you can re-invest your time completing other jobs or doing nothing at all. Not bad! Unit pricing is super common, too. Publishers like MCDM and others use it.
**Pros:**
* **_Easy to quote and charge._ **Clients do a lot of the leg work on unit pricing, which means your job is mostly to ask questions and check their estimates. In well-oiled operations, they already know how much they're expecting and have the money set aside. It's your job to say yes or no.
* **_Efficiency is rewarded._ **The faster you work the faster you get paid. If you finish an 8-hour job in 2 hours, it's good news for everyone. You can re-invest that time into another gig or assembling the new Downton Abbey lego set.
**Cons:**
* **_Negotiations are slim._** Most publishers have a rate and that's it. There's no wiggle room or opportunity to haggle. Maybe you'll get an advance, bonus, or a small bump—but most of the time 15¢/word is the ceiling. Some shops pay as high as 25¢/word. Unit pricing treats the creative like a commodity—nameless.
* **_Thinking isn't accounted for._ **Complexity, craft, and perspective will get you repeat work, but they won't necessarily factor into your rate. That makes unit pricing clumsy for rpgs, where projects of few words and pages often hide a mountain of labor. This was always true of publishing—but game mechanics are another level of complexity on top of pacing, structure, and editing.
### Flat-Rate Pricing
Let me spoil my position on pricing. I think creatives, especially graphic designers and artists, should opt for flat-rate pricing. This is the model where you put a price on the final result or set of deliverables. That's what the client wants and that's what they buy (usually with a deposit up front).
Flat-rate pricing is the perfect model for well-defined projects and scopes. Think: logos, book covers, art, and finished books. The better you get at designing, the easier it will be for you to estimate the time and resources to make it, then you charge the client what it costs to get that thing _made by you_. Value-based pricing.
**Pros:**
* **_Everyone knows the price._** The client knows what they paid for, and you know what you have to deliver to get paid. There might be some bugbears along the way, but you know the way out of the dungeon.
* **_Efficiency is rewarded._ **Clients are explicitly paying for a result, not the hours, which means you can be efficient without it impacting your income. This is the secret to working fewer hours for more money.
* **_Value-filled pricing._** Flat-rate pricing doesn't have a ceiling or throttle the way unit pricing does. If you can prove your value to the clients that can afford it, you can charge that value.
**Cons:**
* _**The scope must be protected.**_ Your flat-rate lives and dies by what you quoted in the project scope. Any work you do that wasn't quoted is work you're doing for free. When clients add deliverables to the project without paying for it, that's called "scope creep." When _you_ add deliverables to a project (because you're such a nice fella), that's called "scope seep."
* **_You get paid the rate no matter what._** If a project takes longer than you expected or costs more than you quoted—you eat that time and money. Clients like flat-rates because they're predictable. With flat-rate pricing, you're betting on yourself to get the job done. You assume the risk.
* **_Clients might suffer from sticker shock_** A price tag is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's predictable. On the other, it hides nothing. A lot of designers complain of clients getting cold feet. Personally, I think the sticker shock is good. The client that backs out of a flat-rate project was likely to dine-and-dash on the hourly model, too.
## What about royalties?
Royalties are unreliable in tabletop games. I'd avoid them. The market is too volatile, the audience too small, and the companies too lean to manage them. Hollywood studios and book publishers are outliers. They have accountants and infrastructure for managing royalties—and it's still not seamless.
I think its better to negotiate other benefits, like bonuses for reaching certain benchmarks in crowdfunding campaigns, merchandising rights, or the ability to own the work and renegotiate after an allotted time has passed. These terms don't tie your income to the long-term success of your clients (which is largely outside of your control, anyway).
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## The next question about pricing models...
What do we charge? That's where things get complicated. It will depend on where you live, how experienced you are, and what kind of work you're doing. Certain industries pay more. Others (like rpgs) pay a lot less. Regardless, I think everyone's rate should be competitive, which is why I have a follow-up in the hopper for later.
In the meantime, here's what we have to think about:
* What does an average income look like in our area?
* What are our current expenses? What do we need to get by?
* How many hours do we want to work a day, week, and year?
* What do we charge per hour to meet our goals?
The secret to being a design hireling is decoding your rate. That gives us a baseline to build everything on top of. Even flat rates—which free us from hourly pricing—still need an hourly rate to make rough estimates. But more on that later.
If you have any thoughts or ideas about pricing, sound off in the comments below.
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## Paying my Joesky Taxes
Talking business is a violation of the Joesky Tax. Here are some hirelings.
**Gunter Kindle.**_An uncommon but harmless puppet of Lusterdale_. Grows his nose when yelled at. An endless supply of torches. "Need a torch, sir? Is this the right spot, sir? Am I talking too much, sir? Have I been a bad boy, sir?" _Free._
**Barkus.**_A common but hardy porter of The Oakfens._ Ox stare at him open-mouthed when he passes. When he crests hills, people see the backpack first. Clinking. Groaning. Like ropes on a ship. 2 crowns a day plus meals (10 total).
**Golda Scribner.**_A common and mostly harmless limner of Sunsound._ Can create a near-perfect likeness of anyone, even people she hasn't met. Costs 2 coros. Always accentuates whatever feature the subject is most sensitive about. "Perfect."
**Barny Sees-It.**_An uncommon but harmless wererat of Sunsound._ He keeps a lookout for anything "fucky." Only two-feet tall. Should be discrete. Wishes he never got bitten by that guy. "Shit's pits. I miss being a rat. Fucking pants..."
**Freda Mücker.**_A common but hardy stablehand of Buttershire._ Gentle like a rock slide. A horse once kicked Freda. That horse broke its legs. When she walks into stables, horses tell themselves they'll never complain again. 1 coro a night per steed.
**Mario de Pinette IV.**_A common and harmless naturalist of Bogford Guild._ He's excited to pay you brutes a crown a day for the opportunity to study slimes in the Hollers of Infinite Pain. Expert in monstrosities. Hobbyist in surgery. Worried parents.
**Mister Barber.**_A legendary and dangerous intellect devourer of Pikeaux._ His white gloves tickle the air in front of him. "300 crowns and I'll unlock his memories over a nice dinner. 200, if you bring a bottle of port."
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## Additional Reading
How to Promote Your WorkHow to reach out to blogs, pods, and media outlets, and the 5 things creators can do to promote their work in a more community-minded way.Explorers DesignClayton NotestineHome - The Graphic Artist GuildSince 1967, we’ve advocated for the Graphic Arts industry and offered robust resources for graphic artists intent on growing their businesses.The Graphic Artist GuildFreelance, and Business, and Stuff (Ebook Only) - HoodzpahA freelance business book for all you creatives looking to start your own business! Contracts, pricing, invoicing, etc. by Amy Hood and Jen HoodHoodzpah
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