billable hours
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- whodovoodoo
i know the game, but it sucks that we sell time. when i'm short on hours i have to find some way to make it up. some weeks i can't find hours to fill up my week, so i try to be productive...but alas they aren't billable so i look bad. what can i do? i show that i am willing to work, but if there isn't hours to be had what else can i do besides development/research?
- sublocked0
SACKUP
- whodovoodoo0
i hate to lie.
- era4O40
I feel ya, man. Do you work for yourself or for another company that requires X billable hours/billing period?
We used to run into that situation a lot, but use things like application sales and licensing, hosting, recurring costs with mark-up (such as domain registration and SEO updates) to pad out the periods with low hours.
If you're into web work, this might be a way to help you too. When you launch sites, tell your clients that you can spend 1-5hrs/mo monitoring their SEO and making fixes where necessary. Then check listings on search engines, monitor key words, tweak changes to meta-data and h1/title/alt tags, work with directory services and listing sites, and provide templated responses to your clients with updates to show them of progress.
You can even use monthly Google Analytics mailers as part of your templates to show the research and results. This proves to clients that your regular 1-5hrs of (billable) work is worthwhile.
If you do print or identity design, well, sorry, I can't help you there. We have issues in that department as well.
Anyway, good luck!
- raf0
I have a different question regarding the subject.
Suppose you're working for an agency client, send him email with a working version of what you work on and wait for him to bounce back (5-30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour). There are lots of intervals like that when you don't do any work, just wait for green light.
Do you bill for the whole time?