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Here’s an industry “norm” a lot of newbie freelancers aren’t often aware of: You can markup extra services by 17.65%.

I’m not sure, but I think that 17.65% is a holdover advertising agency normal practice — they routinely charged their clients that percentage markup for advertising media buys, extra labor and services. I’m not even sure they still do that today. But that 17.65% sure has gotten itself embedded into many other industries…

…like ours.

This markup only comes into play when you’re the only one the client is invoiced by and whom the client pays. You in turn had subcontracted the extra work out prior, which you then marked up on your invoice. The client doesn’t (and shouldn’t) give a whit who the subs are… as far as s/he’s concerned, you’re it.

Clear? Here, it’ll be clearer:

Let’s say you’ve lined up a job writing a small manual for an even $1,000. The client wants it professionally formatted and output to PDF too, a service you don’t do yourself, but your graphic designer buddy does for $300. So, you tell the client you can provide that for

$300 x 1.1765 = $352.95

Mathematically challenged? Trust me, that formula’s correct, but if you want to understand what’s going on: The 1 before the decimal point represents the initial value (your pal’s fee), and the .1765 is your percentage markup in decimal form, hence 1.1765. When that’s multiplied against the base value, you get the whole number you need without jumping through multiple steps and hoops (and better, you minimize the possibilty of screwing it up).

You all do the work and you invoice the client the whole $1,352.95. You get paid. You give your friend his $300. You pocket the $52.95 for your trouble.

Simple.

P.S. Give you any ideas on how to possibly capitalize on all those businesses looking for simple ”website development” work? You write and provide the copy, blah blah blah…

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