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Any freelance renderers out there? (self.freelance)

submitted ago by renderfree

Wondering if there are any freelancers here who do architectural renderings? I recently made a connection with a local firm to do renderings as the start of my freelance career, and would like some advice about pricing, process, etc. Do you charge per rendering? by the hour? some times its hard to judge just how long a particular rendering can take, especially if the client is apt to wanting a lot of changes. How do you approach new clients? any advice for a newbie would certainly be appreciated!

Heres an album of some of my renderings, if anyone could offer advice on how much it is generally acceptable to charge for these quality of images. http://imgur.com/a/CvrJO

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[–]ErraticRat 2 points3 points ago

It really depends on how you deal with the client.

For some jobs I charge by the work day, for some I charge a fixed rate. Make sure that if you charge a fix rate to tell the client the amount of accepted changes. Otherwise you may spend waaaay too much time on one job fixing it endlessly.

If you are starting out, then charging by day/hour is probably better for you, because it's often hard to predict how long a job will take. On the other hand, most clients like having a fixed quote.

It's very hard to say how much you should charge for those renderings. In my opinion they quality of those images isn't good enough, but I know that renderings like that do sell.

Best of luck

[–]renderfree[S] 0 points1 point ago

I definitely am not going for the photo-realistic look, but my market-client isn't high end architecture firms either. I do 99% of my work in photoshop, and can turn out a render in 6 - 8 hours from model through corrections to finish. I live in a city with a population of about 60k with a metropolitan of about 500k, and a lot of firms here use sketchup jpeg exports or basic revit outputs for their visualizations, so I'm trying to appeal to them as a way to engage their clients more visually without breaking the bank on full-blown renders. I've gotten one firm on board, but only made a connection because the founder noticed that we came from the same university(20 years apart.) I'm not sure how to best market/appeal to the market here, or wondering if its worth trying to expand, if developers/contractors would be interested.

on another note, could you expand upon how you discuss with clients the process? how do you describe whats acceptable changes/versus not? I was always really terrible in school in verbally expressing things, so i'm finding it difficult to find tactful ways to accomplish this.

thanks!

[–]ErraticRat 0 points1 point ago

Wow. 6-8 hours from start to finish is quite amazing.

For me dealing with client is always the most difficult part. Im a techie guy and I feel much better dealing with hardware :) What I've learned is to be as precise and direct as possible. Lots of clients have no idea how you work, and won't know how much effort some changes take. It's good to give examples of what you consider a major chage that would require additional charge, and what is a small change. Writing it in emails is much better than just saying it, people ten do forget, misinterpret etc and having it in writing always helps. If I meet the client in person I always follow up with an email to sum up what we discussed and make sure that we both understand each other.

Hope it helps

[–]scientologist2 1 point2 points ago

Depending on the market, I prefer to bill by the hour.

If you have something really complex that takes a while, like compiling code, etc. you can bill that separately (equipment usage) if you have a second computer that you can use so you stay busy, or if it is running overnight. Or you can just tuck it into your normal fees if it isn't so much.

It also depends on what is standard practice in your industry.

of note is this videos for making sure you get paid:

The Vendor-Client Relationship in real life situations