Freelance agreements and pricing

This branch covers agreeing the price and terms of freelance medical-writing work, divided by the question to settle: costs, market rates, client willingness to pay, undercharging, charging basis, billable resources, reserved availability, currency, negotiation and the contract. It leaves finding clients, running the business, business formation, project delivery and employee salary benchmarks to neighbouring branches.

• What a rate has to cover, and how to say so — expenses, unbilled time and comparison with the full cost of employment
• The going freelance rate and how to find it — peer benchmarks and dated Canadian, US and European surveys by service, client, activity, experience and working profile
• Find out what a client will pay — testing prices and deciding how to respond to low offers
• What undercharging does to a practice and to the field — effects on the business, other writers, quality and subcontracting
• Charge by the hour or by the project — client and work requirements, efficiency, fixed-fee risk, estimates, contingencies and time benchmarks
• Charge for all the time and resources a job consumes — travel, preparation, training, literature, licences, pitches and work hidden by a pricing unit
• Charge for the time a client asks you to hold — reserved windows, delayed starts, retainers, cancellation and kill fees
• Choose the currency and carry the exchange risk — home- and client-currency pricing, agreement on currency and management of exposure
• Prepare and conduct the fee negotiation — preparation, client value, disputed estimates, concessions, changes in scope and rate increases
• The freelance contract — scope, contracting parties, content responsibility, risk allocation and payment terms