A thorny subject: The price of infographics

[milena plata]

Hello everybody. I know this is a very thorny discussion subject but also I think is usefull for those news-infographic designers who want to start working as freelance. Someone ask me to guide him about how much an infographic costs, an estimated for a regular collaboration in a newspaper.
I really don't know the answer because it is different to be contracted in an editorial company than work by yourself, obviously.
So, if some of you have any idea about how to quantify the infographic work, I'll really appreciate your comments.
Thanks in advance to all...

[Gonzalo Hernández Arias]

Hello.
Look: your question in effect is very interesting. I work like freelance with different clients worldwide. And also it has been difficult a lot of work to me to be able to find a way of quoting costs. This due to the fact that it is not possible to tabulate an average cost for the variation of the type of currency according to the country. The thing to me has worked very well, is to adapt to the costs of customer that needs your work and especially to ask them, how many they are ready to 'invest' for your services or, one itself to adjust to the budget of them. This way I have come to agreements that have allowed me to obtain works freelance.

It's important to value the type and the complexity of the work, in order that in forward one itself could negotiate a better pays. Where you obtain better results it'is when you can offer them rapidity and quality, though for it you have one same have to sacrifice with nights of sleeplessness.

I hope my opinion works for something.

Saludos... :-)

Gonzalo.

[milena plata]

Thank you very much Gonzalo... your opinion has helped me much.
Saludos desde Galicia.

[Gonzalo Hernández Arias]

Milena!!! hablas español.... haberlo sabido antes..Saludos!!

Gonzalo.

[Hiram Henriquez]

Although I work full time, I do a lot of freelance work through my on company, H2H Graphics & Design. Since I have a full-time job, I can afford to charge clients a bit less since I work out of my home office and don't have any overhead costs other than maintaining software and hardware. What I charge also depends on the client, how deep their pockets are, and how fast the turnaround is. Normally I charge about $65 to $85 an hour, and then I give my clients estimates on how long a project might take (minimum and maximum hours) and try to stick to that. If a graphic is needed within two weeks, then that rate goes up to $100 an hour. One way to come to an hourly figure that works for you is to charge what your overtime rate is at your current work or past job, since the freelance work might be done during your own time after your normal job. As for pricing, if a simple locator or chart takes you an hour or so to do, then based on my example, I would charge somewhere between $65 to $85, maybe even as much as $100 if there are many changes asked for along the way or if the turnaround time is really fast. For more in-depth graphics, such as 3D or illustrations I sometimes charge more. I charge about half as much for vector artwork as I would for 3D or illustrations. So a vector piece that would take me 10 hours would cost in the range of about $650 to $850. Not bad for a day's work. If it's 3D, that will probably take me twice as much and I add a little bit more because of the complexity of the work, so it would be about 20 hours, plus a few hundred more, which comes out to about $1700 to $2000. Of course, you have to figure out what your client can pay and also if multiple jobs are coming your way from one client, you can give them a slightly better deal to keep them coming. Hope this helps.

[milena plata]

Thanks for your comment, off course it helps, specially coming from somebody whose work I admire a lot. Many greetings Hiram.

[Katie Davis]

Now I feel cheap. I've been charging $20 an hour for freelance work. Then spending all my profits on typefaces I've been wanting.