Amen, John! You’ve nailed it once again. This point, wow. . .SO appreciate the reminder.

Many a freelancer — I once was one — believes that as long as you can find clients who pay a high hourly rate, you’re set! The problem, as you know, is that this is not the ‘true’ hourly rate when you take the time actually *finding clients* into account.

A couple of months ago, I met a B2B copywriter, and he boasted of a $175/hour rate. I asked him about how he goes about getting clients, and he said it takes typically 5-6 meetings with the marketing department, a couple of weeks of back-and-forth negotiation with the department lead, and multiple additions and revisions to proposals.

The amount of time he calculated this takes? Between 25 and 35 hours! This is *per client* mind you, and not always do they even say yes after all that!

I pressed the guy about investing so much time in clients up front and that he’s essentially giving away over half his weekly schedule.

That’s a tough one, ’cause his justification was that his high hourly rate made up for it.

So in that case, it seemed to me like his hourly rate is based on (a) the work for the project he just got and (b) the time and effort he put in trying to get his projects.

To me, this seems a bit unfair to the client, passing off time commitments to landing theirs and many other projects to these clients.

What thoughts do you have on the matter?

You’re welcome William. I really enjoyed helping create both the podcasts.