Re: Can 15 year olds charge hourly?

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@JoshWhite I’ve always done it that way – but than again, I started freelancing “on the side,” so vetting clients wasn’t an issue (in fact, _not_ “being picky” (if that’s how you want to look at it) would have left me worse off).

It only feels like “vetting” to the impatient clients – definitely not making anyone “jump through hoops.” I try to be convivial and build a real conversation about the project to understand what they’re really looking for. That kind of relationship is what gets me clients (of course, it also helps that I’m not a total programming retard). Participating on forums helps build that kind of friendly, “interested” reputation as well (though that’s far from the only reason I am …here, for example… :) ). The other benefit is that, once they send along the deposit, work can start almost immediately.

And (to clarify) I was talking about writing a specification, not “spec work.” Sorry for any confusion. I **do not** do spec work, and to anyone who does, I say **STOP**, it’s bad for you. Once in a while, a request comes along that I’m completely unsure about how to build, and so I’ll do some exploratory work to make sure I can “pull it off,” but that’s it.

I’ve done this for about five years now, and I have the amount of work that I can handle. At the moment, that’s one “big” job, a smaller site that I’m doing some basic support for while the client prepares for the actual launch, and a few “odds-and-ends” in the past couple weeks (a logo and an upload form).