One question among a million has plagued humanity for thousands of years, and still remains without an answer.  No, it's not theological, and it has nothing to do with chickens and their alleged eggs.  Rather. it is the question of whether you should bid out your next job based on number of hours or a project basis.

This question is tricky, and I know every designer has a lot of different opinions about the subject.  And in all fairness, all sides probably have a legitimate argument.  So instead of arguing for a particular perspective, I'm going to simply explain my own view.

From the moment I began freelancing, I have always quoted my jobs on a project basis.  Here's a few reasons why:

First, I worked for nearly three years in a law firm where everything was billed by the hour.  While legitimate work was done, a standard practice in legal billing is to assign certain number of minutes (or hours) to certain tasks.  So for example, every phone call is billable for 10 minutes worth of time, even if it's 45 seconds long.

Now in my last post, I argued that a legitimate part of billing your customer is for your expertise, and More >